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THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 
Edited by JOHN H. KERR, D. D. 



THE TEACHING OF JESUS 

CONCERNING 

THE HOLY SPIRIT 



Louis Burton Crane, A. M, 



THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

CONCERNING 

HIS OWN MISSION. Frank H. Foster. Ready. 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE CHURCH. 
Geerhardus Vos. Ready. 
GOD THE FATHER 

Archibald Thomas Robertson. " 

THE SCRIPTURES. David James Burrell. 
THE HOLY SPIRIT. Louis B. Crane 
CHRISTIAN CONDUCT. Andrew C. Zenos " 

HIS OWN PERSON In preparation. 

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

THE FUTURE LIFE 

THE FAMILY 

A Series of volumes on the " Teachings of Jesus " 
by eminent writers and divines. 

Cloth bound. i2mo. Price 75 cts. each postpaid. 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



THE TEACHING OF JESUS 



CONCERNING 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 



By 
Louis Burton Crane, A. M. 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

1 150 NASSAU STREET 

NEW YORK 



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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

DEC 5 1905 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS cX. XXc. No, 

/ 3 / 3 7 6~ 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1905, by 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 



TO MY MOTHER 



PREFACE 



rHE application of the results of 
the study of psychology to the 
Biblical writings has opened up 
a most interesting field for the student of 
religion. It is profitable to consider the 
origin and growth of religious sanctions 
from the point of view of the individuals 
who cherished them, and to mark the 
order in which the various impressions 
which in their sum constitute author- 
ity came to their own in the human heart. 
I can but think, however, that only a 
partial view is gained when the great fact 
of revelation is disregarded in these at- 
tempts. It is one thing to ask how, God 
and His message assumed, men regarded 

vii 



viii Preface 

Him, how much they comprehended 
of His will and how they conceived 
themselves to be doing His will as spoken ; 
and quite another thing to assume that 
all the efforts of men to feel after God if 
haply they may find Him are on the same 
plane with the instructed beliefs of those 
who were within the sphere of revealed 
truth. It may be admitted without ques- 
tion that revelation was at first partial, 
and that it was from the first progressive. 
But unless all real authority is to be de- 
nied to the religion which issued in 
Christianity the first fact to be recognized 
in the study of Bible doctrine is God. 

Consequently we are not considering 
in this brief study the psychology of the 
Holy Spirit or of His influence upon 
men. It is no especial concern of ours, 
for our present purpose, how men con- 
ceived of Him who were outside the 
circle wherein He caused His name to 
be known. Did the primitive seeker 
after God derive the idea of the Spirit of 



Preface ix 

God from his own spirit, thus reasoning 
from the less to the greater ? Or did he 
argue from the name " spirit " which in 
both Hebrew and Greek languages means 
also " wind, " that God was therefore like 
the wind " unsearchable in origin " and 
" immaterial in essence " ? These are 
interesting questions to the student of 
the origin of religion but they are not the 
immediate concern of Biblical Theology. 
Did men at first generally ascribe all that 
was unusual and surprising in their ex- 
perience to the Spirit of God ? Perhaps 
so, where they were without definite 
knowledge of Him. But the Old Testa- 
ment describes how God chose out of 
the world certain individuals and after- 
ward a people to whom to make Him- 
self known and we cannot therefore 
attribute to them such ignorant and su- 
perstitious conceptions. 

If we desire to know what was the 
origin of the notions of power and mys- 
tery which were from the first attached 



x Preface 

to the term " Spirit of God " we shall 
probably not go astray in deriving them, 
not from the idea of "spirit " but from 
the descriptive phrase "of God." God 
had revealed Himself as powerful and 
awe-inspiring. Hence His Spirit must 
naturally be above the limitations of the 
finite. Our task, however, is to discover, 
on the basis of a belief in an authoritative 
revelation, what was actually revealed. 
Of course we must not neglect the ele- 
ment of progress. We dare not attribute 
Paul's conception of the truth to Moses 
nor need we expect to find even in Isaiah 
the teachings of Jesus. That we do find 
some of the later doctrines anticipated in 
the earlier writings is for us a proof of 
the unity of revelation. 

What did Jesus teach concerning the 
Holy Spirit ? We find the phrase upon 
His lips early in His ministry. He feels 
no necessity for its definition. He con- 
sequently uses the term conscious that it 
had already a definite connotation, and 



Preface xi 

without express correction of any previous 
erroneous teaching. We must therefore 
begin with the Old Testament in order 
to discover what is there taught about 
the Spirit of God. Jesus uses the phrase 
or its equivalents at intervals throughout 
His teaching activity, according to the 
record of all four evangelists. We as- 
sume as not needing justification in this 
place that all four are equally authorita- 
tive as witnesses to what He said, and 
that they present a trustworthy record of 
His teachings. It is hardly necessary to 
state that it is the apostles to whom we 
must go for the mature truth about the 
Holy Spirit. Jesus taught in full view 
of the fact that He was entrusting the 
development of His teaching to those 
men whom He had chosen, whose writ- 
ings with their records of the Master's 
words and deeds make up our New 
Testament. It is in the epistles, particu- 
larly of Paul, that we find the ripe, com- 
pleted doctrine. The historical reason 



xii Preface 

for this fact we will try to unfold in the 
course of our treatment. 

This study is offered to Christians with 
the prayer that the Spirit of the Truth 
with whom it is concerned may make ef- 
fective whatever in it is His work, and 
overrule for the truth's sake whatever is 
inspired by the spirit of error. 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Spirit of God in the Old 

Testament i 

II. The Distribution of the Teach- 
ing 24 

III. The Equipment of the Messiah . 35 

IV. The Spirit and the Kingdom . 42 
V. The Sin against the Holy Spirit. 53 

VI. The Father's Chief Gift ... 62 
VII. The Promise of the Paraclete : 

His Mission to the Twelve . 70 
VIII. The Promise of the Paraclete : 

The Christian Life . . . .102 
IX. The Promise of the Paraclete : 

The Conviction of the World. 120 
X. The Promise of the Paraclete : 
His Relation to the Father 

and to the son i30 

XI. The Great Commission .... 143 

XII. Summary 152 

XIII. Indices . . . , 159 

xiii 



CHAPTER I 

The Spirit of God in the Old Testa- 
ment. 

rHE allusions in the Old Testa- 
ment to the Spirit of God fall natu- 
rally into three classes : First, 
those which refer to the Spirit's activity 
in creation ; second, those which indicate 
the relation of the Spirit to the redemp- 
tive purpose of God ; and third, those 
which express the superintendence of the 
Spirit over the spiritual lives of individ- 
uals. 

The Spirit and the Cosmos 

The Spirit is first revealed in the Old 



2 The Holy Spirit 

Testament as the power of God work- 
ing in creation. In Gen. i. 2 it was the 
Spirit of God that moved upon the face 
of the waters. The word by which this 
activity is described is an interesting one. 
It is found also in Deut. xxxii. 11, where 
it refers to the brooding of the mother 
bird over her young. So here we may 
understand that this action of the Spirit 
of God is not only that of protecting 
but that it produced results in the order 
and life of the Cosmos. God works in 
creation, according to the writer of 
Genesis, by the agency of His Spirit. 
Not only the inanimate and the brute 
creation but man himself must look to 
the Spirit as the source of being. We 
read that God breathed into man's 
nostrils the breath or the Spirit of life 
and he became a living soul (Gen. ii. 7). 
This creative energy of the Spirit is the 
general belief of the Old Testament 
writers. " Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, 
they are created " ; referring to the brute 



In the Old Testament 3 

creation (Ps. civ. 30). " By his Spirit the 
heavens are garnished " (Job xxvi. 13). 
" The Spirit of God hath made me and 
the breath of the Almighty giveth me 
life " (Job xxxiii. 4). 

The truth seems to be that God works 
by His Spirit in the creation and preser- 
vation of His world. There is no dis- 
tinction in person between God and His 
Spirit such as one familiar with the New 
Testament would expect. The Spirit of 
God in the Old Testament is rather God 
at work. God worked in the creation 
of the world and in establishing its order. 
God works since creation in the continual 
preserving of the order and harmony of 
His creation, in maintaining its life and 
in providing for the sustenance of His 
creatures. All this He does by His Spirit. 

The Spirit in the Theocracy 

A second and much more frequent 
employment of the phrase " Spirit of 
God " in the Old Testament is in relation 



4 The Holy Spirit 

to the purpose of God to make for Him- 
self a people. Many of the uses of the 
term which seem otherwise difficult to 
explain become on this view plain enough. 
Why should it be said of Gideon and of 
Samson and of Saul that the Spirit of God 
came upon them, causing them, un- 
worthy instruments perhaps, to triumph 
in battle, to display surprising feats of 
strength before the Philistines, to proph- 
esy with the prophets ? (Judges vi. 34 ; 
xiii. 25 ; I Sam. x. 6). Simply because 
these men were in the theocratic line, 
being the agents of God in the establish- 
ment of His great redemptive purposes. 
The lesson that they teach is not that 
God in the Old Testament record is in- 
different to personal character, but that 
He can and does use even wicked and care- 
less men as the agents of His theocratic 
kingdom, to accomplish His almighty 
will. So then in the historical develop- 
ment of the redemptive purpose of God 
the Spirit of God was the agent. He 



In the Old Testament 5 

was known even by Pharaoh to have 
possessed Joseph in Egypt (Gen. xli. 
38). He was characteristic of Moses 
during the days of his leadership of the 
people, and He inspired the seventy men 
who assisted Moses in administering the 
laws to the people (Num. xi. 17, 25-30). 
The Spirit came upon Bezalel to en- 
dow him with wisdom and understand- 
ing and knowledge, and skill in all 
manner of workmanship ; to work in 
metal and stone and wood for the taber- 
nacle, the cradle of worship for the infant 
people of God (Ex. xxxi. 3). Whether 
we are to regard this endowment as a 
special and new thing, so as to make 
Bezalel able for kinds of work of which 
he knew nothing before, as some hold, or 
whether it simply acted so as to enhance 
his own natural powers, as others believe, 
we are not told. Nor is it of much mo- 
ment. The point is that Bezalel's fit- 
ness for this special service for the the- 
ocracy was due to God acting by His Spirit 



6 The Holy Spirit 

upon him. The lesson to be impressed 
upon Israel through all the history was 
that the nation was what it was because 
God had by His own grace chosen to 
call a people to Himself, and give them 
laws and provide them a home. The 
tabernacle was God's thought not Is- 
rael's. His Spirit used men to make it 
but it was His gift for their communion 
with Him which was their highest good. 

The Inspiration of the Prophets 

The guidance of the events which made 
history in the days of the old covenant, 
we are taught on every page of the Old 
Testament as well as in the New Testa- 
ment, was due to God. That guidance 
was made concrete in the persons of an 
especial order of men called prophets. 
The prophet might be a fore-teller, 
but according to Old Testament belief he 
was preeminently a for-teller. He might 
and often did predict the future in the 
course of his prophetic work. But to 



In the Old Testament 7 

be a prophet was to be the spokesman 
of God, to be God's representative on 
the earth, to declare His will. He knew 
God's thought — in part. He was in di- 
rect communion with Him — at times at 
least. To obey him was to obey God ; 
to reject him was to reject God. 

Now the prophets were regarded as 
the peculiar recipients of the Spirit of 
God. Our word inspiration is our record 
of the strength of the impression gained 
from the Bible that the prophets were 
breathed into by the Holy Spirit and that 
what they said they said under the im- 
pulse of God. This was not only the 
case with the prophets who lived and 
worked before the time from which we 
have written prophecy. It is no less true 
of those who have left us the records of 
their activity. We may say then that 
the oral and written guidance of Israel 
during all the time of their national life 
was directly due to the Spirit of God. 
It may not yet be perfectly clear to us 



8 The Holy Spirit 

just what effect the influx or efflux of the 
Spirit had upon a man selected to be a 
prophet. What hints Scripture gives us 
are evidently not given for the purpose 
of satisfying our curiosity. They are 
meant to conserve the facts, not to add 
to the data for abnormal psychology. 
Yet we may believe that these men, 
faulty men of their time, were so acted 
upon by the Spirit of God as to make 
them different, as to make them the 
mediators of truth which had it been 
heeded would have caused a new history 
of Israel to be enacted. 

The Spirit and the Messianic Age 

But these men not only sounded forth 
a futile warning to Israel under the in- 
fluence of the Spirit of God. They tes- 
tified of a new era coming to Israel and 
to the world. They were the heralds of 
a new day which should succeed the 
night of national apostasy. A personal 
Messiah was to appear. A Messianic 



In the Old Testament 9 

age was to dawn when a king should 
rule in righteousness. And from the 
beginning that new day was associated 
in a very peculiar manner with the Spirit 
of God. Isaiah (xxxii. 15) connects the 
time of the regeneration of Israel, when 
the wilderness should become a fruitful 
field, with the outpouring of the Spirit 
of God as from on high. " Then justice 
shall dwell in the wilderness ; and right- 
eousness shall abide in the fruitful field. 
And the work of righteousness shall be 
peace ; and the effect of righteousness, 
quietness and confidence forever" (xxxii. 
16, 17). Again, " Fear not, O Jacob my 
servant ; and thou, Jeshurun, whom I 
have chosen. For I will pour water 
upon him that is thirsty, and streams 
upon the dry ground ; I will pour my 
Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing 
upon thine offspring " (Isa. xliv. 2, 3). 
The time of revival when all the evil ef- 
fects of the sin and apostasy of the old 
Israel should be forgotten and overcome 



io The Holy Spirit 

in the obedience and joy of the new 
Israel, was to be preeminently a day of 
the Spirit of God. The Spirit was to be 
the agent and accompaniment of this 
glorious work of restoration and renewal. 
Ezekiel (xxxvi. 27) makes the advent of 
the Spirit a time of moral and spiritual 
renewal in Israel. " I will sprinkle clean 
water upon you, and ye shall be clean 
. . . a new heart also will I give you. 
. . . And I will put my Spirit within 
you, and cause you to walk in my stat- 
utes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances, 
and do them" (see also xxxvii. 14). The 
well-known passage in Joel (ii. 28 ff.) ex- 
presses the same thought. In this case, 
however, we have the New Testament's 
express identification of the time of Jesus 
with the time of which the prophet 
spoke (Acts ii. 16). 

So that we may freely say that the glo- 
rious era of Israel's history when their 
backsliding should be healed and the re- 
demption long promised should be real- 



In the Old Testament u 

ized was to be brought about by the 
Spirit of God. He was to be the agent 
of the change. 

The Spirit and the Messiah 

But we can go still further ; for this 
new day was made still more definite by 
these old men of God. They were given 
to see not only a new epoch for the 
nation when all their sorrows should be 
passed and the days of their weeping 
should be ended, but they were given 
the vision of the One by whom and 
through whom all this was to be accom- 
plished. For the redemption of Israel 
was to be effected by a Redeemer. The 
course of the development of the con- 
ception of the personal Messiah is famil- 
iar to all Bible students. We know how 
this figure in prophecy at first dim and 
shadowy gradually became to the vision 
of the seer more definite until in the 
later days of the great prophet there 
stood before the nation the presentment 



12 The Holy Spirit 

of the suffering Saviour, the One who 
was to be led as a lamb to the slaughter — 
" wounded for our transgressions, bruised 
for our iniquities." But the significant 
thing for our study is that the same Scrip- 
tures represent this personal Messiah as 
in a very peculiar and sympathetic rela- 
tion to the Spirit of God. If Isaiah tells 
of the shoot out of the worn-out stock 
of Jesse and the fruit-bearing branch out 
of his roots, he adds as quite in natural 
order, " and the Spirit of Jehovah shall 
rest upon Him," which is " the spirit of 
wisdom and of understanding, the spirit 
of counsel and of might, the spirit of 
knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah" 
(xi. 1). That is, the equipment of the 
Messiah for His great work shall be due 
directly to the Spirit of Jehovah. 

In the latter part of the book of Isaiah 
where we read of the Servant of Jehovah 
the same combination is found (xlii. 1). 
There is of course no doubt that the Ser- 
vant is in some passages not thought of 



In the Old Testament 13 

as a single person, that He is identified so 
to speak with the Messianic people, but 
from the whole drift of the teaching 
concerning the Servant we gather that 
the Messianic people were to be gathered 
up in one personal representative. What 
He does, He does as the idealized head 
of the true Israel, the Servant of Jehovah 
as Israel will come to be in Him, in the 
new time of which the prophet speaks. 
So also the Servant speaking in the 48th 
chapter of Isaiah in a remarkable passage 
whose meaning is not altogether clear, 
claims the accompaniment of the Spirit 
in a work of judgment upon the enemies 
of Jehovah and of chastening for Israel. 
" Behold, I have refined thee, but not as 
silver ; I have chosen thee in the furnace 
of affliction. . . He whom Jehovah 
loveth (Israel) shall perform his pleasure 
on Babylon, and his arm shall be on the 
Chaldeans. . . Come ye near unto 
me, hear ye this ; from the beginning I 
have not spoken in secret ; from the time 



14 The Holy Spirit 

that it was, there am I : and now the 
Lord Jehovah hath sent me and his Spir- 
it' ' (vv. 10, 14-16). We are probably 
to take "his Spirit " here as object and 
not as subject of the sentence, and if so 
it simply corroborates our previous find- 
ings as to the relation between the Ser- 
vant and the Spirit of God. 

The Spirit and the Individual 

The third function of the Spirit in the 
Old Testament was the promotion of 
fellowship with God and the cherishing 
of the spiritual life of the individuals 
whom God called to Himself. That 
there was a personal religious life taught 
and practiced by the Old Testament 
saints it is impossible to deny without 
disregarding the plain teaching of the 
Psalms and much of the prophets. 
There are passages which indicate that 
the Spirit was the guide and helper of 
the man who was ambitious after holi- 
ness. " Cast me not away from thy 



In the Old Testament 15 

presence; and take not thy holy Spirit 
from me" (Ps. li. 11). " Teach me 
to do thy will ; for thou art my God : 
thy Spirit is good" (Ps. cxliii. 10). 
This sanctifying agency of the Spirit is 
not yet fully developed. It needed the 
fuller teaching of Jesus and His apostles 
to bring it to maturity ; but as surely as 
sanctification was possible under the old 
covenant so surely was it the Spirit who 
effected it. Much could not be revealed 
about the way of sanctification until its 
means were provided for all men. God's 
sacrifice for sin must first be offered, and 
the Old Testament from first to last is pri- 
marily concerned with the preparation 
for a Redeemer. We must expect 
therefore, to find that the function of the 
Spirit of God on which most stress is laid 
is the function which is most intimately 
related to the purpose of God to provide 
a Redeemer. 

What then have we found as to the 
teaching of the Old Testament about the 



1 6 The Holy Spirit 

Spirit ? Chiefly this. That the Spirit is 
God active in the world. That He is 
especially the divine principle working 
for the redemption of men. God in the 
Old Testament works, at least from 
within, on the hearts of men, by His 
Spirit. We should doubtless find that He 
exercised His rule from without, by ex- 
ternal manifestations, by the Angel of 
Jehovah. But the redemptive agent 
that worked in men's hearts was His 
Spirit, His good Spirit, His holy Spirit, 
as it is variously called. From the be- 
ginning of the manifestations of the The- 
ocracy, in the life and work of Moses, 
in the building of the tabernacle, in the 
work of the prophets of Judah and of 
Israel, and lastly and most gloriously in 
the mission of the Messiah and in the 
promised wonders of the Messianic age, 
it is the Spirit who is God active, equip- 
ping lawgiver and artificer, prophet and 
king to do God's work to prepare Israel 
and the world for the great work of re- 



In the Old Testament 17 

demption through the Messiah of Je- 
hovah. 

Other functions of the Spirit are not 
dwelt upon. The cosmic Spirit is given 
his true place and left in order to describe 
his more important function of guiding 
the progress of the Kingdom toward 
Jesus Christ. So also we have found the 
Spirit to be the agent of God in sanctifi- 
cation, but as already indicated this func- 
tion could not as yet be revealed in its ma- 
turity. The Old Testament looks toward 
Christ. It is therefore natural that the 
chief function of the Spirit of God should 
be the superintendence of the plan of sal- 
vation whose preparatory stages it was the 
purpose of the Old Testament to de- 
scribe. 

We have found also that there was 
foretold a time when the Spirit then 
working within limits which were pre- 
scribed by the historical necessities of 
the case, would be poured out without 
measure. This thought of the two eras 



1 8 The Holy Spirit 

of the Spirit's power and influence we 
must keep clearly in mind as it is not 
possible to understand the teaching of 
Jesus without giving it its full weight. 

The Trinity in the Old Testament? 

But what shall we say as to the Trinity 
in the Old Testament ? Merely this, 
that the doctrine is not therein revealed. 
The Spirit is God active in the hearts of 
men to accomplish His glorious pur- 
poses, chiefly of redemption. In the 
same way the doctrine of the Son of 
God is not specifically revealed in the 
Old Testament. This does not affect 
our attitude to the very explicit teaching 
of the New Testament concerning the 
eternal Sonship of Christ. We can by 
the aid of the later teaching trace His 
working in the days of the older revela- 
tion and find a fine harmony between 
the dim and shadowy outlines of the past 
and the clearly defined presentation of 
the present era. So with respect to the 



In the Old Testament 19 

doctrine of the Spirit. There were no 
doubt reasons which we cannot fathom 
why God chose so to unfold His nature 
step by step to His people. The weak 
and faulty minds of men could not re- 
ceive the whole truth at once. Particu- 
larly in Israel where there was so much 
inclination to idolatry He no doubt re- 
vealed Himself in His unity rather than 
in His triune nature to save His people 
from further temptation to this sin. 

There are, however, not lacking indi- 
cations which in the light of the later 
teaching we may translate into manifesta- 
tions of the advanced doctrine of the 
nature of God. There are passages 
where God and the Spirit are distin- 
guished. The Spirit is sent from God as 
if it were a distinct entity. Men are said 
to grieve the Spirit of God. Further, 
God in creation speaks in the plural, 
" Let us make man in our image. " 
Some have held this to be an indication 
of the other persons in the Godhead. 



20 The Holy Spirit 

Others have regarded it as a plural of 
majesty. But God never hesitates to say 
" I." Others again have thought that 
it was addressed to the angelic host. But 
we lack any other hint that the angels 
were God's agents in creation or that we 
are made in their image. The first in- 
terpretation is therefore the safest. Fi- 
nally, the passage which we have already 
quoted contains, if our reading of it is 
the true one, a grouping of the persons 
of the Trinity which in the light of later 
teaching is most striking. The Servant 
of Jehovah says (Isa. xlviii. 16) " Now 
the Lord Jehovah hath sent me and his 
Spirit/ ' 

The so-called " historical " interpreta- 
tion of the Old Testament will of course 
reject these discoveries of latent New 
Testament truth in the older writings. 
Its advocates insist that we are to find 
nothing in the Old Testament but what 
was currently known and believed at the 
time of the composition of the books. 



In the Old Testament 21 

But on the contrary, it is the view of the 
New Testament that these " holy men of 
old " were frequently used by the Spirit 
to utter truth which they did not them- 
selves fully grasp (I Pet. i. 10-12). If in- 
deed the prophets themselves are compe- 
tent witnesses as to their relation to the 
Spirit of God we need not be surprised 
to find them far in advance of their day 
in the teachings that they utter. 

No doubt we are to treat these intima- 
tions, if they are such, as nothing more. 
We are not to seek for the full-rounded 
teaching of the New Testament in these 
preparatory days, but nevertheless it is 
instructive to one who believes in the 
progress of revelation to find that the 
Old Testament has left room for the 
more specific teaching of the New. 

If you go into a modern printing office 
where the full-color illustrations for one 
of our great magazines are prepared you 
will find that as many plates are required 
as there are primary colors. First, the 



22 The Holy Spirit 

yellow values of the artist's conception 
are printed. A little here and a little 
more there, deep or pale according to the 
degree of intended combination with 
other colors to be later applied. Then 
the red values are added in the same way, 
superimposed upon the first printing so 
as to furnish all the red and yellow tones 
which will exist in the finished proof. 
What the picture will be like no one ex- 
cept an expert can tell. But when the 
blue values are applied in the third process 
and the lines are more perfectly defined 
by the black ink of the fourth process, 
the full glory of the artist's idea appears. 
It is somewhat the same with the pic- 
ture of the Spirit's nature and work in 
the successive revelations of the Old and 
New Testaments. It is not easy to read 
the final state of the doctrine from the 
first impression. The first values to be 
applied are necessary to the full and final 
form. But they can only be perfectly 
understood by a glance at the finished 






In the Old Testament 23 

truth made complete at the hands of the 
Christ and His apostles. For when with 
delicate and sure articulation those later 
hues have been applied we gain the full- 
rounded and mature idea of the Master 
Artist. 



CHAPTER II. 

The Distribution of the Teaching. 

TJyT' HEN we come to examine the 
^)r four Gospels which are the 
main sources of our knowledge 
as to the teaching of Jesus, we are 
struck with a significant fact. We dis- 
cover that in the Synoptic Gospels there 
is little if any advance upon the teach- 
ing of the Old Testament. We know 
little more about the Spirit of God when 
we have read the first three Gospels than 
we do when we have studied the passages 
of the Old Testament which refer to the 
Spirit. There are only two or three pas- 
sages in these Gospels in which appreci- 
24 



Distribution of Teaching 25 

able progress is made and these would 
not be intelligible had we not other say- 
ings of Jesus by which to interpret them. 
The new teaching is almost all found in 
the Gospel of John and in that Gospel 
almost all in the last discourses of Jesus 
which are characteristic of it. 

The Teaching of the Synoptic Gospels 

In the Synoptic Gospels we have em- 
phasized with some force the relation 
which we marked in our review of the 
Old Testament doctrine, of the Spirit to 
the Messianic age and to the personal 
Messiah. Jesus appears at Nazareth and 
claims to be the one foretold in the 
prophecy of Isaiah. " The Spirit of the 
Lord is upon me, because He anointed 
me " (Luke iv. 18) to do the things 
which from of old have been promised 
of the Messiah (Isa. lxi. 1). In a con- 
troversy with the Pharisees in which they 
ascribe His power to cast out demons to 
the spirit of evil He replies, " If I by the 



26 The Holy Spirit 

Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the 
kingdom of God come upon you " (Matt. 
xii. 28). These are simply identifica- 
tions of the predictions of the Old Tes- 
tament concerning the relation of the 
Spirit to the Kingdom and the Messiah. 
They point to the fulfillment of proph- 
ecy. 

Likewise the passage in regard to the 
sin against the Holy Spirit, which follows 
in the same connection in Matthew's 
Gospel. As we shall attempt to show, 
(ch. v.) the sin of the Pharisees was 
against the Spirit as the superintending 
agent of redemption. It was not that 
the Holy Spirit was more inviolable in 
His person than the Father or the Son, 
but because His work was the prepara- 
tion of a salvation for men, and rejection 
of that salvation was therefore peculiarly 
sin against Him. He was the accompani- 
ment of the kingdom of God — to oppose 
it was to oppose Him, and this was the 
climax of ingratitude to God. 



Distribution of Teaching 27 

We have also the corroboration of Je- 
sus of the Old Testament view of the 
source of the power of the prophets. 
He attributes the prediction of David in 
which he testified of the Messiah, to the 
Spirit (Ps. ex. 1 ; Matt. xxii. 43, 44 ; cf 
Mark xii. 36). This simply reiterates the 
earlier teaching that when the Old Tes- 
tament prophets worked and wrote it 
was in the power of the Spirit of God. 
We find therefore thus far no advance 
upon the former conceptions of the 
Spirit. 

Transition to the later Teaching 

A connecting link between the earlier 
and the later teaching is, however, prob- 
ably to be seen in the passage in Matt. x. 
19, 20, (cf Mark xiii. 11 ; Luke xii 12). 
" When they deliver you up, be not anx- 
ious how or what ye shall speak ; for it 
shall be given you in that hour what ye 
shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, 
but the Spirit of your Father that speak- 



28 The Holy Spirit 

eth in you." Here is continued the 
earlier idea that God's called servants are 
equipped with the Spirit for the work 
which is given them to do. But the 
passage contains the further notion which 
we have not as yet seen that there was a 
day coming in which the Spirit would be 
the personal helper and guide of God's 
messengers. No explicit mention is made 
of His personal character to be sure. 
But the sort of help which is here prom- 
ised would be unintelligible unless this 
speaking Spirit were personal. As such 
the passage becomes a foregleam of the 
Johannine promise of the Paraclete or 
Advocate who should plead their cause 
before men. It is at least an intimation 
of the time when the Spirit should be 
revealed in His personal and sympathetic 
character. 

The two remaining references in the 
Synoptic Gospels to the Holy Spirit were 
spoken by Jesus after His resurrection. 
We should naturally expect them to be 



Distribution of Teaching 29 

tinged with the thoughts of the last dis- 
courses uttered just before His crucifix- 
ion. One of them is indeed couched in 
language in which direct allusion is made 
to the promise of the Paraclete (Luke 
xxiv. 49 ; Acts i. 4). The other could 
not be understood except on the basis of 
that promise (Matt, xxviii. 19). 

The Teaching of John s Gospel 

Turning now to the Gospel of John 
we find that the teaching that is charac- 
teristic of that Gospel is that which we 
have found by allusion only in these last 
three passages of the Synoptic Gospels. 
Especially in the chapters which contain 
the farewell discourses of Jesus is it par- 
ticularly developed (xiv-xvi). " He shall 
give you another Paraclete, that He may 
be with you for ever, even the Spirit 
of truth. But the Paraclete, even the 
Holy Spirit . . . He shall teach you 
all things," etc. This Comforter, Ad- 
vocate, Paraclete, is to take Jesus' place; 



30 The Holy Spirit 

is to be the personal helper and friend of 
the disciples ; is to be the superintendent 
of the work which Jesus introduced and 
founded ; is to convince the world of 
the truth of the claims which He made, 
and in general to be the power of God 
in developing and carrying on the gracious 
work which Jesus had begun in the world. 
It is just at this point that the teaching 
of the apostles concerning the Holy Spirit 
begins. We should be at a loss to ac- 
count for the advanced truth which these 
men, and particularly Paul, utter concern- 
ing the loving, tender and thoroughly per- 
sonal aid and comfort of the Spirit, were 
it not for these precious words which 
the apostle John records for us in his 
Gospel. Do we need any explanation of 
this fact ? Is it not plain for us on the 
face of the Gospel record that Jesus was 
leading these men step by step as they 
could grasp His teaching ? He was teach- 
ing them not only by His words, but by 
His example and by His life. That 



Distribution of Teaching 31 

teaching could not be finished until the su- 
preme act of His life by which He made 
all the rest intelligible, was accomplished. 
The prophets had joined the new era 
of the Spirit to the Messianic age, but 
according to their custom they did not, 
even if they were able, distinguish be- 
tween near and far. The Messianic day 
for them was the day of the regeneration 
of the world through the Messiah. But 
the Messiah came in the course of his- 
tory. His life had to be lived among 
men. His teachings about the Father 
must go forth. The wonderful creden- 
tial which His miracles furnished had to 
be presented to the world, culminating 
in the stupendous sign of the resurrec- 
tion, before the world was ready for the 
outpouring of the Spirit of God. The 
Spirit was intended in the divine economy 
and according to the teaching of Jesus 
to carry on the redemption of the Father, 
but He could only do so when redemp- 
tion was accomplished. 



32 The Holy Spirit 

These twelve men were human, faulty 
and imperfect. Their minds were in- 
capable of receiving the whole teach- 
ing at once. It was necessary therefore 
for Jesus to lead them by a gradual un- 
folding to the necessity of His sacrifice 
before He could show them how that 
sacrifice was to become effectual for the 
sin of men and the redemption of the 
world. Consequently, until the death 
of Jesus was imminent and they had be- 
gun to look into the future with appre- 
hension in view of their impending be- 
reavement, the revelation of the Spirit's 
nature and work could not naturally be 
made. And although the Synoptic Gos- 
pels do not contain the discourses in 
which this revelation is made, yet we do 
find in their record of words of Jesus 
which were uttered after that teaching 
was given that they knew of it. 

In short, Jesus in Matthew and Luke 
and the Acts assumes the previous teach- 
ing in John's Gospel. How much more 



Distribution of Teaching 33 

the Great Commission means to us when 
we reflect that He had already given the 
promise of the Paraclete and had taught 
them His mission in the scheme of re- 
demption ! How much more it means 
to us when we read in Luke the 
promise of the power from on high, 
to know that the nature of that power 
had already been revealed to these wait- 
ing men! 

The New Era explains the Distribution of 
the Teaching 

The New Era of the Spirit — that was 
the secret of the progress of the teaching 
of the Lord about the Holy Spirit. The 
Messianic age must be fully inaugurated 
before the outpouring which had been 
connected with it in the promise could 
be effective. " If I go not away the 
Paraclete will not come." The work 
which the Paraclete is sent to do must be 
ready for Him. He is sent to make 
effective the sacrifice of Christ. That 



34 The Holy Spirit 

sacrifice must therefore have been ac- 
complished. 

The three years of Jesus' ministry 
though immensely important to us for 
the glimpse they give us of His person, 
and for the historical record they afford 
of the manner in which God fulfilled His 
promises to provide a salvation, are not 
after all the greatest years in the history 
of redemption. They were necessary, 
for without them the further history 
could never have been enacted. But the 
Messianic age as an age of salvation ac- 
tually began at Pentecost when in the 
outpouring of the Spirit the promise of 
the Father began to be realized. The his- 
tory of the work of the Holy Spirit can 
never therefore be fully written for it is 
yet in course of accomplishment. 



CHAPTER III 

The Equipment of the Messiah. 

rHERE has been much discussion 
of recent years among certain 

Biblical critics as to whether Jesus 
actually claimed to be the Messiah during 
the first part of His ministry. Some 
have even dared to doubt that He posses- 
sed so early the consciousness that He 
was the Messiah. It is not in our prov- 
ince to attempt to answer these doubts 
but in speaking of the equipment of the 
Messiah for His work we immediately 
touch upon Scripture which ought to be 
conclusive against them. At Jesus' first 

3S 



36 The Holy Spirit 

visit to Nazareth after His public ministry 
had begun, we find Him participant in a 
scene which seems conclusively to show 
that He was not only thoroughly con- 
scious that He was the long promised 
One, but that He intended others to 
know what exalted claims He was mak- 
ing (Luke iv. 18). 

Here Jesus appropriates the passage 
from Isaiah (lxi. 1), where the Servant 
of Jehovah is in the first place the sub- 
ject of the prophecy. It was a definite 
claim that He was about to fulfil that 
which had originally been promised of 
the Servant. Let us see what is the con- 
tent of the utterance and estimate its 
value for our purpose. " The Spirit of 
the Lord is upon me, because He an- 
ointed me to preach good tidings to 
the poor ; He hath sent me to proclaim 
release to the captives, and recovering of 
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them 
that are bruised, to proclaim the accept- 
able year of the Lord. " The quotation 



Equipment of the Messiah 37 

is essentially the same as the passage in 
Isaiah, the Septuagint version being the 
source of the Greek words. As such it is 
Jesus' own testimony to the authority 
of His mission. He deliberately identifies 
Himself in words which were originally 
spoken by the prophet in the person of 
Jehovah's ideal servant as the one who 
should bring release from captivity and a 
return to the restored Jerusalem. The 
joy of that glad time is compared to the 
joy of the year of Jubilee when all slaves 
were set free. What admirable figures 
these were to describe the work of Jesus 
as Messiah and Redeemer is evident to 
us when we have comprehended the 
meaning of His life and death. That 
they were not understood by those who 
heard them in the synagogue at Nazareth 
is not strange when we consider the false 
notions of the manner in which the Mes- 
siah was to come which had grown up 
in Israel. For the attempt to kill Him 
which followed His address we must at- 



38 The Holy Spirit 

tribute rather to anger at the refusal to 
work signs in their midst than to out- 
raged feelings that such a one should 
claim to be the Messiah. 

But the main point in the claim is that 
the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of Jehovah, 
was upon Him. It was through the 
power of the Spirit that He expected to 
fulfill His mission. It was by the power 
of the Spirit that the delivery of the cap- 
tives was to be accomplished, and that 
the whole of the Messianic work de- 
scribed with so much of tenderness and 
sympathy by the prophet was to be car- 
ried on. It is a significant thing for our 
study that Jesus in coming before His 
own people among whom He had been 
brought up should choose just this pro- 
phetic passage with which to assume and 
claim His place in the plan of God. No- 
tice the words by which that assumption 
and claim are made. The word " anoint- 
ed' ' is in the aorist tense — the tense of 
definite action in past time. As if He 



Equipment of the Messiah 39 

would say, Once for all in the past I was 
set apart by the anointing of the Spirit of 
God for my definite work. The word 
translated "sent" is on the other hand 
in the perfect tense. As if to say, He 
sent me and here I am on His mission. 

The Baptism of Jesus 

What was this definite action in the 
past to which Jesus refers and by which 
He had been consecrated for His wcrk ? 
Luke means us to ask the question and 
he has so arranged his material that the 
answer is plain. For we read in the same 
chapter the story of the Temptation in 
which " full of the Holy Spirit " Jesus 
was "led in the Spirit'' into the wilder- 
ness. Following back still further this 
reference to the Spirit we find in the pre- 
vious chapter the account of the way in 
which the Spirit came upon Him for 
His mission. In other words, Luke ap- 
parently reads the answer to the question 
in the account of the Baptism, and means 



40 The Holy Spirit 

us to do the same. The reference of 
Jesus to the anointing of the Spirit was 
to His baptism when the Holy Spirit de- 
scended upon Him and the voice came 
out of heaven, "Thou art my beloved 
Son; in thee I am well pleased." Jesus 
nowhere makes direct reference to His 
baptism but we are certainly justified in 
thinking of Him as here sanctioning the 
historical account of the descent of the 
Spirit at His baptism. 

But can we go further than this ? 

Luke tells us not only of the operation 
of the Spirit at His baptism but he de- 
scribes in a most circumstantial way the 
agency of the Spirit in the appearance of 
Jesus upon earth. To him the prophe- 
cies of the relation of the Spirit to the 
plan of God for redeeming men and to 
the Messianic day which Luke saw dawn- 
ing for the world meant something, and 
he did not hesitate to ascribe to the 
Spirit of God the conception of Jesus and 



Equipment of the Messiah 41 

the whole course of the supernatural his- 
tory by which the Son of the virgin was 
born and protected during His infancy 
and equipped for His unique work. 
The supernatural conception was never 
the subject of Jesus' own teaching. But 
the author of this Gospel evidently un- 
derstands Him to join in a most signifi- 
cant way His own testimony to the 
Spirit's agency in His Messianic work to 
the facts which the evangelist has gathered 
from other sources as to His origin and 
preparation for the assumption of that 
work. And as we see it develop and 
come to its culmination we can do no 
other. The Spirit of God, or to speak 
by the New Testament name, the Holy 
Spirit, was the agent who made possible 
the work that Jesus did. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Spirit and the Kingdom. 

/N the last chapter we found Jesus 
making the claim that He was the 
Messiah and asserting that He had 
been anointed by the Holy Spirit for His 
work. We find now a passage in the 
Gospel of Matthew in which this asser- 
tion receives a still further emphasis. 
Matthew does not record the scene in 
Nazareth, but when we know from 
Luke's Gospel that it had taken place 
we gain help in the understanding of the 
passage before us. " If I by the Spirit 
of God cast out demons, then is the 
42 



Spirit and the Kingdom 43 

kingdom of God come upon you " 
(Matt. xii. 28). Luke has the same pas- 
sage in the same connection but substi- 
tutes the phrase " ringer of God " for the 
" Spirit of God " (Luke xi. 20). This is 
quite in accordance with the ideas of the 
Spirit of God which prevailed in Old 
Testament times and which persisted in 
the time of Christ, before the more ex- 
plicit teaching about the nature of the 
Spirit was given. The Spirit of God was 
God active for the redemption of men — 
God working. Luke simply gives us an 
equivalent for the term " Spirit of God " 
— one which brings out more plainly the 
activity of God. The Spirit of God and 
the finger of God might well be equiva- 
lent terms in this case. Matthew on the 
other hand consistently set forth Jesus as 
the fulfillment of Old Testament proph- 
ecy and, as we have seen, it was a com- 
monplace of prophecy to connect the 
Spirit of God with the Messianic time. 
To suppose that Luke has here the orig- 



44 The Holy Spirit 

inal phrase and Matthew the explanatory 
one is to reverse the natural order. 

The Power of the Spirit a Sign of the 
Kingdom 

This was the occasion when after the 
healing of a demoniac the Pharisees 
charged that He casts out demons by the 
power of Beelzebub, the prince of the 
demons. Jesus shows by a very simple 
argument that this could not be the case, 
and then makes the sublime assertion 
that His dispossession of demons is the 
natural effect of His Messianic power. 
The Spirit of God was the promised ac- 
companiment of the Messianic time and 
the power by which the Messiah was to 
do His work. A claim of casting out 
demons by the power of the Spirit was 
equivalent to a claim to be the Messiah. 
But He makes it even clearer than this 
inference would be. He says, The Spirit 
as you all know and believe is to furnish 
the power and energy for the kingdom 



Spirit and the Kingdom 45 

of God which God has promised to es- 
tablish. Now when I by the Spirit do 
these wonderful works it is a sign that 
the Kingdom is at hand, — the Kingdom 
of God is come upon you. 

It would be easy to show from the 
teaching of Jesus about the Kingdom 
that it was regarded as both present and 
future. That it was looked upon by 
Jesus as established potentially on the 
earth during His ministry and at the same 
time that it was to be gloriously fulfilled 
in the future. We have already seen 
how in the prophetic writings of the Old 
Testament the Spirit was to be the en- 
ergizing power of the Kingdom (p. 9). 
Jesus simply emphasizes this promise. 
He makes the claim that since the Spirit 
is revealing Himself by His signs it is an 
unfailing indication that the Kingdom is 
at hand. It was a claim to be that one 
who was anointed by the Spirit (at bap- 
tism), who had been conceived by the 
Spirit (perhaps), at least whose whole life 



46 The Holy Spirit 

according to the historians of the Gos- 
pels was lived by means of the Spirit and 
in the sphere of the Spirit. This very- 
working of Jesus was a sign of the Mes- 
siah's kingdom, for it had been foretold 
that the Kingdom would be accompanied 
by the coming of the Spirit and that the 
Messiah would be endowed with the 
Spirit in an especial manner. 

Entrance to the Kingdom 

If we turn now to the Gospel of John 
we will find that this relation is still further 
emphasized. It is true that John does 
not attribute the phrase " Kingdom of 
God," or " Kingdom of Heaven " to 
Jesus very frequently. He uses more 
often equivalents of the term. But in 
chapter three he has furnished us with 
the key to his variation. Here we find 
the assertion to Nicodemus "Except one 
be born anew, he cannot see the King- 
dom of God" (iii. 3). And again, "ex- 
cept one be born of water and the Spirit, 



Spirit and the Kingdom 47 

he cannot enter into the Kingdom of 
God " (iii. 5). The Kingdom is here 
the chief good to be desired. But in the 
further development of the thought it is 
not the Kingdom but eternal life which 
is the chief good for men (iii. 15, 16, 36). 
We can therefore treat these two terms 
as equivalent in John's Gospel. We have 
found the Kingdom's progress every- 
where marked by the presence of the 
Spirit of God. The presence of the 
Kingdom is to be detected by the signs 
of the Spirit's presence. From the 
Synoptic representation we should be 
more likely to think of the Kingdom as 
an external manifestation in the world. 
But we here receive the descriptive idea 
that the Kingdom is in progress only as 
men are born again, or born of the Spirit. 
Not only is the casting out of demons a 
sign of the Kingdom but dispossession 
must be followed by possession by the 
Spirit of God. Nicodemus is represented 
as being blind to the spiritual realities of 



48 The Holy Spirit 

life. He comes to Jesus with the con- 
fession that Jesus is some heaven-sent 
teacher because of the miracles which 
He worked. In this observation Nico- 
demus meant more than the words imply 
and Jesus, as His frequent custom was, 
answered the thought rather than the 
words. Nicodemus meant that like other 
bearers of a divine commission in the 
past Jesus had His credentials. Jesus 
answers that to receive the real benefit of 
His mission one needed not simply eyes 
and ears, but a new life, a new creation 
through supernatural birth, and a growth 
fostered by heavenly impulses. 

The rest of the discourse merely en- 
forces upon Nicodemus' blindness the 
same truth in different aspects. No man 
can expect to enjoy the fruits of Jesus' mis- 
sion, that is, the Kingdom, or eternal 
life, who is earth-born. Spiritual goods 
require spiritual faculties to appropriate 
them. This supreme spiritual good was 
to come to men through being born of 



Spirit and the Kingdom 49 

water and of the Spirit. Jesus further 
explains that it comes through faith. 
" The Son of man must be lifted up ; 
that whosoever believeth may in Him 
have eternal life." Entrance to the 
Kingdom therefore is obtained by the 
agency of the Spirit. It comes also 
through faith. Jesus does not attempt 
the harmony of these two statements. 
It does not seem to have occurred to 
Him that there was need of adjustment. 
We need the later teaching of Jesus and 
His apostles to make the articulation be- 
tween these two aspects of the truth. 
What we are concerned with here is the 
agency of the Spirit in the new birth. 

" Born of Water and of the Spirit " 

Jesus says, " Except a man be born 
anew," or "from above." Which of 
these two renderings is the true repro- 
duction of our Lord's words we shall 
not attempt to decide. For our purpose 
it is of little importance. For it is abun- 



50 The Holy Spirit 

dantly evident that the source of that new 
birth is heavenly. The agent of it is the 
Spirit (John iii. 5). But the new birth 
is described as being " of water " as well 
as " of the Spirit.'' The preposition here 
means " out of " which suggests the bap- 
tism " in water " and " in the Holy Spirit 
to which reference is made in the preach- 
ing of John the Baptist (Matt. iii. 11). 
As the water was the cleansing agent 
of the body so the Spirit would be the 
cleansing agent of the soul. 

But to be born " of water " signified 
here more than this. Why is it coupled 
with the Spirit as necessary to the new 
birth ? Is there anything more intended 
than that the new birth must be an 
awakening of the spiritual nature ? John 
the Baptist has already furnished us with 
the answer to the question. He has con- 
trasted the two baptisms in a way to call 
attention to their essential differences 
(Matt. iii. 11 ; John i. 32, 33). Johns 
baptism was "in water." It was also a 



Spirit and the Kingdom 51 

baptism "unto repentance/' Water is 
symbolical of cleansing, washing away of 
sin, putting away the past. The baptism 
of the Spirit is "in fire." Fire was the 
symbol by which the presence of the 
Spirit was made known at Pentecost. It 
stood for the energy, the fervor and the 
contagion which should characterize the 
disciples of the Kingdom. It rested 
upon every disciple's head. This was 
a sign that the new ardor would spread 
from disciple to disciple until the glow 
of the new life should have filled the 
world. The new birth must then con- 
tain the two elements. It must wipe 
out the past and it must furnish the living 
principle of future love and service. 

Jesus is not here referring to Christian 
baptism but He is emphasizing the same 
truths which were afterward embodied 
in it. No man enters the Kingdom until 
he has been cleansed of sin and the holy 
principle of life has been implanted 
within him. John the Baptist was the 



52 The Holy Spirit 

embodiment of the Old Testament. 
His testimony to Christ was the witness 
of the old dispensation to the new. He 
was the forerunner, the crown and rep- 
resentative of that forerunning revelation 
which had prepared the way for Christ 
all through the history of the people of 
Israel. His baptism was an Old Testa- 
ment rite. It was the utmost that the 
Old Testament could do toward the new 
life. It could preach righteousness, it 
could advocate cleansing, it could demand 
repentance. But that baptism to be truly 
effectual needed the new principle of 
life. This could only be supplied 
through the work of Christ, the symbol 
of which was the Spirit's fire. John's 
baptism was not unnecessary. On the 
contrary, every candidate for the Kingdom 
must experience that cleansing which was 
the characteristic of John's baptism. But 
he must also experience that which was 
the peculiar feature of the Christian era. 
He must be born of water and the Spirit. 



CHAPTER V 

The Sin Against the Holy Spirit, 

/N the Gospels of Matthew and Mark 
the passage about the unpardonable 
sin follows the ascription to Jesus of 
demonic power by the Pharisees because 
He cast out a demon. By these two 
evangelists the saying is placed in close 
connection with this incident and is evi- 
dently intended by them to describe 
Jesus' further words on the same occa- 
sion. Luke has the former passage es- 
sentially as it is given by the other two 
{c / Matt. xii. 22-32 ; Mark iii. 19b-30 ; 
Luke xi. 14-26), but the passage about 

53 



54 The Holy Spirit 

the sin against the Holy Spirit he has re- 
corded in another connection (xii. 10). 
Luke's habit in this portion of his 
Gospel is topical, and he has here col- 
lected a number of sayings of Jesus 
which will be helpful when persecution 
comes. 

" Be not afraid of them that kill the 
body. . . Fear him, who hath power 
to cast into hell." Your Father careth 
for you. The sparrows are not forgotten 
and ye are of more value than many 
sparrows. Confession of Christ will be 
followed by His confession of you. On 
the other hand, it is possible by denying 
the divinity (asserting the demoniacal 
character) of Jesus' work and mission to 
offend the Holy Spirit. But you need 
not fear lest you will do this unawares 
when you are brought before councils, 
for the Holy Spirit will Himself help you 
to bear a good testimony and will even 
give you words to speak in the hour of 
trial. 



Sin against Holy Spirit 55 
Matthew's and Mark's Order Chronological 

It is possible that this saying was ut- 
tered twice by our Lord. But if not 
then there can be no question that Mat- 
thew and Mark have the true historical 
setting. In its context according to these 
Gospels we get a strong light on the 
meaning of the words. It has long been 
matter for controversy what the saying is 
intended to teach. But a closer study of 
the passage in its connection reveals its 
true meaning and delivers us at the same 
time from any morbid fear lest by some 
means or at some time unknown to us 
we may have committed the sin. 

What was the Unpardonable Sin ? 

Notice that the sin whatever it may be, 
is closely connected with the denial of 
Jesus' mission as the Messiah. These 
Pharisees had attributed to Him demonic 
power in working His miracles. That 
is, they had so far repudiated God their 



56 The Holy Spirit 

Father in His great redemptive purpose 
as to blaspheme His Son. A more awful 
example of ingratitude, of utter abandon- 
ment can hardly be imagined. It was 
railing at the sovereignty of God. It was 
insulting His fatherhood. It was con- 
temptuously disregarding His almighty 
purpose to save men from sin and to re- 
store them to His favor. It was a slight 
upon His grace. When we consider 
how the successive acts of grace and love 
had been performed by God for this peo- 
ple, and how all in succession had been re- 
jected or at least undervalued and forgot- 
ten by them, we begin to see how wicked 
was this attitude of the Pharisees. This 
was by no means the first act of the kind 
in their history. It was rather the begin- 
ning of the crowning act of ingratitude 
and wicked spite by which they rejected 
God in crucifying His Son. It was in 
the same series with their successive re- 
jections of God under the old covenant to 
which Jesus Himself later refers and to 



Sin against Holy Spirit 57 

which Stephen alludes in his defence 
(Matt, xxiii. 29-39 ; Acts vii. 51). 

Now this rejection of God was the re- 
jection of His purpose to redeem Israel. 
It was the slighting of His promises. It 
was disobedience to His commands. 
But these commands and these promises 
were all vitally connected with the King- 
dom of God and the Kingdom was, ac- 
cording to the prophets, to be the special 
care of the Spirit of God. The Spirit 
was still the agent of redemption now 
that the personal Redeemer was mani- 
fested. He was active in the conception 
of Jesus ; He was present at and effect- 
ive at His baptism ; the Spirit led Him 
into the wilderness to receive His repre- 
sentative trial by Satan ; and the Spirit 
was the power by which He was enabled 
to perform His gracious acts of healing. 
To reject Jesus therefore, to repudiate 
utterly and irrevocably the purpose of 
God in Jesus Christ, was to insult and 
blaspheme the Holy Spirit. 



58 The Holy Spirit 

Jesus does not say that these Pharisees 
had committed the great sin, but He 
certainly intimates that they were in 
danger of it. We know indeed that 
they had many other invitations to accept 
Jesus, and that even on the cross He 
prayed for their forgiveness, implying 
that by repentance they might be saved. 
The apostles after the resurrection 
preached to the Jews, — perhaps even to 
some who had been active in the cruci- 
fixion, and besought them to repent. 
So that we can see that no isolated act on 
the part of these men could be construed 
as the sin against the Spirit. 

On the other hand, the consistent at- 
titude of opposition against God which 
these men — this nation — had manifested 
revealed a disposition which must at this 
time have become fixed. An omniscient 
mind could therefore read the inevitable 
end of their opposition and characterize 
their attitude as the sin against the Spirit 
even though that sin was not yet made 



Sin against Holy Spirit 59 

complete. In fact from man's point of 
view their sin was not yet inevitable. But 
the Son of God knew that this blasphemy 
was part of that final act by which they 
would refuse the offer of mercy of their 
Father and insult their covenant God. 
He therefore characterizes it as the sin 
against the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit had 
been the promised accompaniment of 
that offer of mercy in its historic mani- 
festation — had been indeed the agent of 
God in its preparation and actual appear- 
ance. 

Can we commit the Unpardonable Sin ? 

When we come to translate this lan- 
guage of our Lord into the religious life 
of to-day and ask, What is the sin against 
the Holy Spirit ? we have accordingly no 
other answer than this. It is the persis- 
tent and irrevocable rejection of the offer 
of mercy in Christ. The Spirit is re- 
vealed as especially concerned with the 
redemption of men. In promise and in 



60 The Holy Spirit 

fact God by His Spirit set out to save 
men. Jesus Christ was the special object 
of the Spirit's activity on earth and after 
His ascension according to His own 
words it is the office of the Spirit to re- 
veal Him and to apply His gracious work 
to the hearts of men. 

To reject Christ therefore is to repu- 
diate God's Spirit. To persist in that re- 
jection until that subtle line has been 
crossed beyond which character is set for 
good or bad, is to commit the blasphemy 
for which there is no forgiveness. The 
apparent contrast between the sin against 
the Spirit and sin against the Son of man 
must have reference to the appearance 
of Jesus in the form of a man. So long 
as men had not refused finally the salva- 
tion which God by His Spirit had pre- 
pared they were in the line of forgive- 
ness. A sin against Jesus as Son of man, 
as a prophet, as the worker of miracles, 
could be forgiven, for they were not yet 
conscious that the power by which He 



Sin against Holy Spirit 61 

worked was the Holy Spirit. But now 
they had been warned that Jesus was the 
embodiment of God's redemptive pur- 
pose. They had been expressly told that 
His miracle working was the evidence of 
the Spirit of God. He was now for 
them identified with the promised King- 
dom in which the power of the Spirit 
was to be supreme. Sin against that 
Spirit was unpardonable because it in- 
volved so much. Separation from God 
must follow the final refusal to enter His 
Kingdom and presence. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Father s Chief Gift, 

/N the eleventh chapter of Luke's 
Gospel (v. 13) we find a saying of 
Jesus which is particularly illumina- 
ting for our study of the Holy Spirit. 
" If ye then, being evil, know how to 
give good gifts unto your children, how 
much more shall your heavenly Father 
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask 
Him." 

This saying closes a section in which 

Luke gathers together some of our 

Lord's teaching about prayer. The 

disciples come to Him and ask Him to 

62 



The Father s Chief Gift 63 

teach them to pray. He responds by 
giving them the model which we call 
the Lord's Prayer. The author is then 
led by the likeness of subject to narrate 
further teaching of Jesus about prayer. 
He records a parable which is found 
nowhere else, in which persistence in 
prayer is taught — the parable of the 
Friend in Bed. " I say unto you, . . . 
because of his importunity he will arise 
and give him as many as he needeth." 
Then follows the manifest teaching of 
the parable. " Ask . . . seek . . . 
knock." Be importunate in your prayers. 
God would have you reveal your sincer- 
ity by your persistence. After this we 
have a third saying of Jesus on the same 
subject. One which teaches the disposi- 
tion of our Father to answer prayer shown 
from His Fatherhood. This is the pas- 
sage in question. 

The Promise in Matthew 
Matthew has the passage almost ver- 



64 The Holy Spirit 

batim from the words " Ask, . . . 
seek, . . . knock . . ." An im- 
portant change, however, is that he sub- 
stitutes " good things" for "Holy 
Spirit/' reading, " how much more shall 
your Father who is in heaven give good 
things to them that ask Him" (Matt. 
vii. 7-11). 

The Two Promises Identical 

At first sight these good things seem 
to be material goods, and if this were the 
case we should discover a lack of har- 
mony between the two passages which 
we should find it difficult to resolve. But 
on closer examination it will be seen that 
Jesus in Matthew also is teaching the 
willingness of the Father to care for the 
spiritual good of His children, so that the 
passage becomes identical with Luke's 
version. We should remember that 
Matthew's record of the Sermon on the 
Mount is to some extent topical, part of 
the sixth and much of the seventh chap- 



The Father s Chief Gift 65 

ters being arranged under the heading of 
the Sermon, because they, like it, were 
characteristic of the kind of teaching 
which He gave during the Galilean min- 
istry. The account of the Lord's Prayer 
in Matthew belongs to this class of say- 
ings. There is of course no reason for 
thinking that Luke's occasion for the 
Prayer is more chronological than Mat- 
thew's. His arrangement is topical also, 
but the occasion itself is more probably 
the true occasion than is Matthew's. He 
collects sayings about prayer which are 
bound together by that common thought 
and so much more likely to have been 
spoken in the same circumstances. So 
taken we may use some of Luke 's sayings 
to interpret the others. Making use of 
this method we find that the subjects of 
the prayers have not been predominantly 
material but spiritual. Jesus has to be 
sure bidden them pray for daily bread. 
But He has also charged them to plead 
for the coming of the Kingdom (which 



66 The Holy Spirit 

we have seen was to be specially marked 
by the presence and power of the Spirit). 
They are to ask also for forgiveness of 
sins — the victory of the will of God on 
earth — all spiritual gifts. This is no less 
true in Matthew's Gospel than in Luke's. 
Indeed in a later verse in the sixth chap- 
ter (v. 33) Jesus has named the chief ob- 
jects of seeking for a child of God. " Seek 
ye first His Kingdom and His righteous- 
ness." When therefore in the seventh 
chapter Matthew records the words of 
Jesus " seek and ye shall find," we in- 
evitably conclude that the Lord is still 
referring to the Kingdom, and means — 
seek the Kingdom and ye shall find it. 

In later teaching He still further de- 
velops this thought and represents the 
Kingdom as the chief object worth striv- 
ing for. He devotes two parables to the 
enforcement of this idea, The Hidden 
Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price. 
So that we may fairly say that He is still 
speaking of the spiritual life — of the 



The Father's Chief Gift 67 

Kingdom. Still further, when He says 
" Knock and it shall be opened unto 
you," he means, Knock at the door of 
the Kingdom and it will not remain closed 
against you. So that the words in Mat- 
thew though they are probably divorced 
from their connection may be seen after 
all to refer to spiritual things no less than 
in Luke. When Jesus promises in Mat- 
thew " good things " it is the same prom- 
ise as when in Luke He promises the 
"Holy Spirit." The saying in both 
places is relevant to the willingness of the 
Father to bestow spiritual gifts. The 
Kingdom is the realm of the Spirit's 
activity. When one evangelist reports 
Jesus as saying that the Father will give 
the goods things of the Kingdom to them 
that ask Him, and the other records that 
it was the Holy Spirit that was promised, 
we need not go far for an explanation. 
One simply gives Jesus' exact phrase and 
the other interprets it for us. In both 
the teaching is the same. 



68 The Holy Spirit 

The Meaning of the Promise 

What then does Jesus mean to say? 
Just this. You who are parents do not 
mock at the natural requests of your 
children for food. It is indispensable to 
their life. Shall then your heavenly 
Father mock at your pleadings for that 
which is equally necessary for your spirit- 
ual life ? The Holy Spirit represents in 
the parallelism — food — the sustenance of 
the body. Jesus therefore teaches the 
necessity of the Spirit for that life which 
is life indeed. The Father is its source 
and He is disposed to give it to those 
who show willingness to receive. The 
Holy Spirit is the " good thing " which 
embraces every other good thing. It is 
the foundation of our relation to God as 
Father. As food is the first thing and 
the indispensable thing which we give to 
our children, so this chief gift the Father 
will not withhold if we ask Him. 

Here is not simply the Old Testament 



The Father s Chief Gift 69 

idea that the Spirit of God is the neces- 
sary equipment for God's service. It is 
an advance upon that idea. The Spirit 
is not here the uniform of the messenger ; 
it is the very means of his life. How 
this is to be is not yet explained. The 
full doctrine of sanctification is not yet 
revealed. It would therefore not be 
fitting to detail the Spirit's agency in that 
spiritual process. But we have certainly 
a hint of what Jesus was afterward to 
teach in the Fourth Gospel and which 
the apostle Paul was still further to de- 
velop in his epistles. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Promise of the Paraclete : His 
Mission to the Twelve. 

rHERE is a passage in the Synop- 
tic Gospels which may well serve 
to introduce this subject though 
it is not expressly concerned with the 
Paraclete. It is recorded by the three 
evangelists in three different connections. 
Matthew presents it in the original charge 
to the twelve (x. 20). Mark includes it 
in the discourse of Jesus on the Last 
Things (xiii. 11). While Luke as we 
have already noticed collects it with 
the others which are apparently intended 
70 



Mission to the Twelve 71 

to represent our Lord's teaching about 
behavior under persecution (xii. 12). 
Luke's use of the passage has therefore 
no bearing upon its chronological rela- 
tions. It is uncertain whether Matthew 
or Mark has the historical connection of 
the passage. Matthew is frequently topi- 
cal in this part of his book. He pre- 
sents his material according to its subject 
rather than with reference to its histori- 
cal relations. This leaves us with a preju- 
dice in favor of Mark's order and yet 
as has been remarked by competent crit- 
ics there is no reason why such a saying 
as this may not have been uttered twice 
by our Lord. It would be equally ap- 
plicable to the situation in Matthew and 
Mark. In the former Gospel the occa- 
sion of its utterance was the first mission 
of the twelve, in the latter it forms part 
of the final charge to the same men. 

The Promise of the Paraclete Anticipated 
Assuming then that whether or not 



72 The Holy Spirit 

they were spoken at any other time, they 
were at least part of the instructions given 
to the twelve ; in view of the impending 
departure of Jesus they form a very in- 
teresting introduction to the Johannine 
teaching. When the apostles are brought 
before magistrates they are not to be anx- 
ious about the witness which they shall 
bear to Christ. They are not to fear lest 
on the one hand they shall unworthily 
represent their Master, or on the other 
lest they shall needlessly bring their lives 
into jeopardy. It shall be given them in 
that hour what they shall say. " For it is 
not ye that speak but the Holy Spirit." 
The Spirit is to say for them just the 
things which will worthily represent them 
before the rulers as followers of Jesus and 
yet in such a way that they will not be 
rashly exposing their lives to danger. 
They are to refrain from worry and anx- 
iety. Their Advocate is a mighty one 
who has their case upon His heart. As 
such the passage is a remarkable fore- 



Mission to the Twelve 73 

gleam of that other teaching which was 
so soon to follow, according to John's 
record, when after supper He began, 
" Let not your heart be troubled." He 
was to leave them. They were to be 
left to bear the brunt of the persecution 
without the comfort of His bodily pres- 
ence, but the Paraclete from the Father, 
the Advocate, the Comforter, would be 
in them and would speak for them. 

The New Teaching 

But this precious doctrine was to re- 
ceive a much more definite and express 
emphasis and its truth was to be made 
more reasonable in the teaching about 
the nature and work of the Spirit which 
was now to follow. 

The four chapters of John's Gospel 
beginning with xiv. 1 contain very many 
precious thoughts and have become most 
naturally the inner sanctuary of the 
Christian's Bible. But for no part of 
their teaching are we more indebted to 



74 The Holy Spirit 

our Lord than for the very wonderful 
words which describe to us the mission 
of the Paraclete. 

Meaning of Paraclete 

The word paracletos (7rapaK\r)To<;) so 
frequently used in these chapters needs 
perhaps a word or two of comment. 
Neither the translation " comforter " in 
John's Gospel, nor "advocate" in the 
First Epistle (ii. 1) expresses the full 
content of the Greek word. The verb 
from which the noun here used is de- 
rived means not only to comfort, but in 
the first place, to call to one's side for 
aid. It then means to speak to, to ad- 
dress, to call on ; and then as modifica- 
tions of this general idea, it may mean to 
admonish, or to exhort, or to beseech, or 
to comfort, or even to teach. The noun 
paracletos therefore may be used with 
any or all of these ideas clinging to it. A 
paracletos may be a helper before a judge, 
technically an advocate ; or an interces- 



Mission to the Twelve 75 

sor in any sense, formal or informal ; or 
simply a helper or assistant. It is a preg- 
nant word for which we have no ade- 
quate equivalent in English. The Ger- 
man word " Beistand " or our colloquial 
term " standby " comes near to giving 
the sense of the expression. 

We are not however at a loss to inter- 
pret the meaning of our Lord even 
though we have no adequate word to 
reproduce it. The thought of the situa- 
tion in which these men stood will help 
us to realize what were the various ideas 
which the word was intended to convey 
to their minds. " Comforter " is no 
doubt the first sense which the expres- 
sion was intended to bear. Jesus began — 
" Let not your heart be troubled." He 
Himself was to be taken away but they 
were to be comforted with the promise 
of the Spirit who would take His place, 
to do for them that which even He had 
been unable to do. They feared for the 
future. They were oppressed by their 



76 The Holy Spirit 

great responsibilities, but Jesus promised 
them the Spirit to be their guide and 
teacher. They had been entrusted with 
the interests of the Kingdom but He 
who was the Kingdom's special sponsor 
and superintendent would be to them 
not only a personal friend and helper but 
also continue to fulfill His historic mis- 
sion with respect to the Kingdom. As 
representatives of the faith that was to 
transform the world into the paradise of 
God, they stood in a new and responsible 
position toward that world now lying in 
wickedness. But they were now taught 
that He would convince the world with 
respect to sin and righteousness and judg- 
ment. With Him was the power and 
they were to be the instruments in His 
hands. 

So much and more we may believe lay 
enwrapped for these men in this wonder- 
ful word Paracletos. And for us there 
is no other way of interpretation. We 
are to read the meaning of the word in 



Mission to the Twelve 77 

the revelations of the nature and mission 
of the Spirit as given to us in these chap- 
ters. Our happiness and usefulness as 
Christians will depend upon how fully 
we understand and appreciate our possi- 
bilities as instruments of this same Spirit. 

The New Era 

For we must remember that Jesus was 
now announcing the advent of that new 
reign of the Spirit which the prophets 
had long ago foretold as the sure accom- 
paniment of the Messiah's Kingdom. 
That Kingdom had, to be sure, been 
already inaugurated, but the ministry of 
Jesus in His earthly life was in a very 
real sense preliminary to the work of 
saving the world by means of His life 
and death, and this could only be ac- 
complished after He had arisen and gone 
to His Father. He said to His disciples, 
" It is expedient for you that I go away ; 
for if I go not away, the Paraclete will 
not come unto you " (John xvi. 7). The 



78 The Holy Spirit 

manner of His going was the secret of 
the meaning of this sentence. His de- 
parture was through suffering and death 
and the Spirit was given for the purpose 
of making that sacrificial work effective 
in the hearts of men. The Spirit could 
not come until all was ready. Now how- 
ever we see Him on the verge of His 
trial and before He goes He must tell 
the disciples the meaning of His death 
and His provision that it should not be 
in vain. The plan of God for us men 
and our salvation embraced three stages : 
First, the era of preparation, which is 
described in the Old Testament. Second, 
the era of realization, which includes the 
earthly life of our Lord, His death, res- 
urrection and ascension. Third, the era 
of application, which embraces the story 
of the conquest of the world by Chris- 
tianity from Pentecost on. In the first 
was the promise of the salvation, in the 
second the fact of salvation, and in the 
third is the gradual appropriation of the 



Mission to the Twelve 79 

fact. The first was the Father's day in 
which He was the one revealed person 
of the Godhead ; the second was the day 
of the Son of God ; the third is the day 
of the Spirit of God. 

We find our Lord therefore at the 
close of His brief time making prepara- 
tions for the dawn of a new day, when 
all the promises of God were to be ful- 
filled. 

The Promise for Personal Comfort 

It is a sign of the close human friend- 
ship of Jesus for these men — a token of 
the reality of His humanity that there was 
a personal message in the promise of the 
Spirit for these twelve disciples, or rather 
for the eleven, for if Judas heard any of 
the promises they must have fallen on 
deaf ears. The first word about the 
Paraclete was uttered to relieve their very 
natural despair at the thought of His de- 
parture from them. They had companied 
with Him for two years. They had 



80 The Holy Spirit 

come to depend upon Him and to trust 
and love Him. He was the head of the 
movement and at the thought of His 
separation from them very natural feel- 
ings of grief and loss and bewilderment 
possessed them. Jesus did not rebuke 
this attitude. He understood it and felt 
that the time had come to assuage their 
grief by the revelation of the necessity of 
His departure. Not that they would or 
did fully comprehend it, but now hence- 
forth they would have the means of com- 
fort or at least of explanation when they 
should be brought into the position of 
witnesses for Him to the people. And 
so He says to them, " Let not your heart 
be troubled : believe in God." Do not 
fear that He who has already fulfilled 
His promises to His people will fail at 
this point of critical significance. Our 
relations which have been so sweet and 
intimate will not be disturbed by my 
going but rather they will assume an 
even more tender and intimate character. 



Mission to the Twelve 81 

And if you are in despair because the 
works which seem to you so important 
will stop — let not this affect your faith ; 
for if you maintain this relation of faith 
in me, fully trusting in what I have been 
and am to you, " greater works than these 
shall ye do, because I go unto the Father,' ' 
and the new era of the Spirit's power 
will have been inaugurated. " And I 
will pray the Father and He will give you 
another Paraclete." As I have been 
with you during these years, these two 
precious years, teaching, correcting and 
comforting you and revealing the will of 
the Father unto you, so this new and 
other Paraclete will do for you after I am 
gone. 

It was a promise of a real substitute, 
not a temporary makeshift, but a real 
compensation for the losses which they 
were to sustain. So He bids them not 
even to mourn when they considered the 
nature of the provision which the Father 
was to make for them. The promise 

F 



82 The Holy Spirit 

must be taken at its face value. It was 
no attempt of Jesus to lessen the force 
of a personal loss by pointing out unreal 
partial compensations. The Paraclete 
was to undertake no tentative work. 
Their heart was not even to be troubled, 
for did they but know it the substitute 
would be to them as real a Paraclete as 
He Himself had been. 

// was also a Promise to the Heralds of the 
Kingdom 

But we must not lose the force of this 
promise by making it altogether or even 
chiefly a personal one. Jesus did have 
compassion on their human weakness and 
did cheer their human grief but they 
must presently have divined more than a 
personal message of comfort in His 
words. His teaching about the King- 
dom and their relation to it had been too 
explicit for them not to realize that they 
were soon to have enormous responsibili- 
ties upon their shoulders. The King- 



Mission to the Twelve 83 

dom coming and the King departing! 
The Messianic reign to commence and 
the Messiah dead and gone ! How can 
we estimate the effect of the scene at 
Caesarea Philippi (Matt. xvi. 15 ff.) with- 
out imagining some such thoughts as 
these in their hearts. Surely part of the 
burden that oppressed them was due to 
perplexity amounting almost to despair 
for those new true principles whose force 
as taught and lived by Him had begun 
to dawn upon them. Apart from Him 
how could they win their appropriate 
victory over the world ? 

Jesus answers this unspoken but inevi- 
table apprehension. " I will not leave 
you orphans : I come unto you." I will 
be with you as truly after my bodily de- 
parture as when you could see and touch 
me. Through the Spirit you will have 
me with you and will be able to com- 
municate with me as truly as you do now. 
" We will come unto him and make our 
abode with him" (the man who loves 



84 The Holy Spirit 

Christ and keeps His word). In other 
words, Jesus promises His presence with 
true disciples after His bodily separation 
just as truly as before. The communion 
will however not be by means of sense 
but through the Spirit. 

Still further notice the second clause 
of this verse : (16) u He will abide with 
you forever.' ' Here was another ground 
of superiority of the new relation over 
the old. The old bodily intercourse was 
limited to times and seasons. At the 
most it must be bounded by the ordi- 
nary limits of human life. But the other 
Paraclete was to abide forever. Jesus 
would come to them through the Spirit 
and His coming thus would be for al- 
ways. No more separations would dis- 
turb them. There is also here a sign of 
the world mission of the disciples. This 
was spoken to these men as representa- 
tive of their class. They would pass 
away but other disciples would take their 
places. Disciples as such there would 



Mission to the Twelve 85 

always be and their support— their Para- 
clete — would be this other one as Jesus 
had been the Paraclete of the first disci- 
ples. 

The Spirit of the Truth 

One other aspect of the promise to 
these chosen friends and helpers of the 
Lord must be noticed. This other Para- 
clete was the Spirit of the truth. It is 
no doubt true that the individual Chris- 
tian may claim this promise for himself. 
So also he may expect to be taught by 
the Spirit and to have his memory quick- 
ened as to the life of Jesus and its 
reference to his own salvation just as 
truly as these first disciples of our Lord 
(xiv. 26). 

But there is surely a special reference 
of these words to the apostolic circle. 
For they were the first representatives of 
the truth whom the Father was to send 
out into the world. It was they who 
needed most the comfort of this promise 



86 The Holy Spirit 

that when He who was the truth incar- 
nate should be withdrawn, truth would 
still prevail in their hearts and in the 
world ; and that when He who had 
taught them all they knew of spiritual 
things should be separated from them 
their education would not cease but 
would go on until they should know all 
things and in the presence of their glori- 
fied Lord receive His " Well done/' 

We must seek the meaning of the 
phrase in the customary usage of the 
apostolic writers. John who here records 
the word " truth " uses it almost invari- 
ably in its absolute sense. It is truth, not 
as opposed to falsehood ; not as equiva- 
lent to the credibility of a fact or series 
of facts ; not truth as sincerity as of a man, 
for example ; but truth as embodying the 
highest realities that man can grasp ; the 
nature and character of God, the duty 
and destiny of man and the relation of 
God to man. That is, the truth is the 
essence of the Gospel. (Cf. Gal. ii. 5. 



Mission to the Twelve 87 

" The truth of the Gospel " means the 
truth which is the Gospel.) The Spirit 
of the truth then is the Spirit whose func- 
tion in the divine economy is to superin- 
tend and to guide the action of the truth ; 
who is the truth's agent because He is 
the truth's essence. If Jesus were the 
truth incarnate, the Spirit was the same 
truth in disembodied form. As God's 
Son Jesus had revealed the truth ; as 
spiritual agent of the same truth the 
Paraclete was to come to men. It is on 
account of this spiritual quality that the 
world cannot receive Him (xiv. 17), as it 
was on account of the same quality in 
Jesus' claims and person that the world 
as such did not receive Him. It was a 
spiritual work that Jesus came to do, 
that is, the Gospel is the satisfaction of 
spiritual needs and the world is material 
and so cannot feel those needs as real 
(John viii. 47). But the disciples have 
seized the Gospel — they are therefore of 
the truth and they know the Paraclete 



88 The Holy Spirit 

already though they have not understood 
that he was a different person. " He 
abideth in you/' Already He was in 
them though He was to be manifested 
in power when Jesus had gone. " He 
shall be in you." In verses 18-24 of this 
chapter we have described in most won- 
derful manner the effect of the Spirit 
upon them as the Spirit of the truth. 
He will open their eyes to see things of 
which they have never dreamed. He 
will cause them to see Jesus in a light 
which should be brighter than Trans- 
figuration even. " I will not leave you 
desolate; I come unto you." Yes, and 
in that coming the scales will fall from 
your eyes and you will see me as I have 
never appeared to you. " Yet a little 
while and the world beholdeth me," 
that is, from now to resurrection, by the 
eye of flesh. " But ye behold me " — in 
a different fashion both now and then. 
He speaks of the spiritual vision which 
the eleven were beginning to have of 



Mission to the Twelve 89 

Him and which in the reign of the Spirit 
should be made so much clearer. 

He proceeds, " Because I live/' that 
is, because I am absolute life which can- 
not be disturbed by the death of the body, 
"ye shall (so) live also," and so in the 
Spirit shall ye " behold me." Still fur- 
ther, " In that day ye shall know that I 
am in my Father." This should be in- 
terpreted to mean not the day of resur- 
rection, nor of Pentecost alone, but that 
long day which is daytime indeed, which 
began with the return of Jesus to the 
Father when they should know Him by 
the Spirit. When the Spirit of truth 
shall possess you ye shall then know the 
truth about my relation to the Father, 
which is a relation which embraces you 
also. Jesus in the Father ; His own in 
Him and He in them. That wonderful 
union takes place in the realm of the 
Spirit. It cannot occur while He is 
still on earth, for God is Spirit. It 
must occur in that sphere in which the 



90 The Holy Spirit 

Spirit can come unhampered to His 
rights. 

This is part of the truth which the 
Spirit of truth is to mediate to them as 
disciples of Jesus. Verse 26 of the same 
chapter (John xiv.) continues the same 
assurances of the work of the Spirit of 
truth upon these men. Here we find 
the phrase " Holy Spirit " for the first 
time in these last discourses of Jesus. 
This is the name which is so common in 
Christian experience and in theology. 
The adjective " holy " here as elsewhere 
in this Gospel denotes not only moral 
purity, but, with a retrospective glance 
at the original meaning of the Hebrew 
word which it represents, " complete 
separation from all that is of the world 
and complete consecration to all that is 
spiritual and heavenly/' This Holy 
Spirit is to be sent in the " name " of 
Jesus (v. 26). Name in Scripture means 
character. The Father therefore sends 
the Spirit on the ground of what He has 



Mission to the Twelve 91 

in Jesus revealed Himself to be. Jesus 
was the Father's revelation of redemp- 
tion. Just because He was that must 
the Father send the Spirit. 

The Holy Spirit as 'Teacher 

"He shall teach you all things, and 
bring to your remembrance all that I said 
unto you/ 5 Jesus spoke incompletely 
to His disciples because they were hin- 
dered by His bodily presence from re- 
ceiving the full spiritual vision. It was 
not until He had laid down the body of 
His flesh in sacrifice that they could ap- 
preciate the full meaning of His mission 
and His person. " I have yet many 
things to say unto you, but ye cannot 
bear them now" (xvi. 12). But after 
His departure the Spirit was to continue 
and complete their education. He is the 
Spirit of the truth. He would therefore 
cause them to know the truth. " He shall 
teach you all things. " This must refer to 
the truth of the Gospel and mean that the 



92 The Holy Spirit 

whole bearing of the message of salvation 
in Christ would be revealed to these men. 
We cannot hope therefore to add any- 
thing to what was known by these disci- 
ples about the Gospel. Their words are 
as final — if they spoke what they were 
taught — as those of Christ Himself. 

The promise in the latter half of the 
verse is also of special importance. "He 
shall bring to your remembrance all that 
I said unto you." These are promises 
which deal particularly with the function 
of these men as workers for the King- 
dom. Their human frailties were to be 
swallowed up in the new capacities which 
were to be given to them. Their human 
inabilities were to be replaced by spiritual 
power. It was only those who had ac- 
tually heard Him who could have their 
memories of Him made perfect. So 
that this promise must refer to these men 
in a direct and particular sense. It must 
be a promise of equipment which only 
His apostles were to enjoy. As such 



Mission to the Twelve 93 

how much force are we to allow to it ? 
It is a significant thing that John, the ac- 
curacy of whose memory has been so 
often challenged, should be the one of 
the evangelists to record this saying of 
Jesus. He seems to have realized that 
what he told of Jesus must seem to his 
readers to be too detailed and circum- 
stantial to be the product of pure human 
memory ; that his reports of the sayings 
and doings of Jesus carried a claim of 
greater accuracy than was possible. So 
he tells on what grounds he claimed to 
be able to narrate the whole truth. One 
may indeed hesitate to say just what de- 
gree of accuracy in the recalling of 
Jesus' teaching this promise may imply. 
But it certainly may be pressed so far as 
to make the apostles credible witnesses, 
even beyond that which the ordinary 
unaided human powers could compass, of 
the truth of the Gospel. 



94 The Holy Spirit 

The Allusion to the Paraclete in Luke 

Another passage may be cited to show 
what effect this coming of the Paraclete 
was intended to produce upon these 
men. It is found in the last chapter of 
Luke's Gospel. " Behold, I send forth 
the promise of My Father upon you : 
but tarry ye in the city, until ye be 
clothed with power from on high " 
(v. 49). This promise is repeated and 
enlarged upon in the first chapter of the 
book of Acts. The fourth verse may in- 
deed be a repetition which Luke gives 
in his second book, taking up the sub- 
ject where he had left off. The eighth 
verse of the same chapter, however, 
must have been spoken at a subsequent 
time, probably at the Ascension. Both 
verses form a commentary upon the pas- 
sage in Luke and must be studied with 
it. Luke represents it as having been 
spoken at one of the appearances of our 
Lord during the forty days which, as he 



Mission to the Twelve 95 

tells us, intervened between the Resur- 
rection and the Ascension. Jesus had 
just been teaching them what were the 
great fundamentals of the Gospel mes- 
sage which they were going out into the 
world to proclaim : the fulfillment of the 
Old Testament revelation concerning 
Himself ; the necessity of His suffering 
and death and resurrection ; repentance 
and remission of sins to be preached in 
His name to all the nations. They were 
to be witnesses of these things. These 
were the truths they were to proclaim. 
He thus specifies the central doctrines 
which they were to preach and for this 
great work He gives them the promise 
— the expectation that the long-heralded 
promise of the Father will be fulfilled in 
them. It was the promise of the new era 
of the Spirit. Here is direct reference to 
such predictions as Isa. xliv. 3 ; Ezek. 
xxxvi. 27 ; Joel ii. 28 ; Zech. xii. 10. It 
was a renewal of the promise of the Para- 
clete with special reference to themselves. 



96 The Holy Spirit 

The "promise" means the thing 
promised. That which had been joined 
inseparably to the Messianic Kingdom in 
the prophetic vision was now that the 
Kingdom had been inaugurated by the 
death of the King to receive its fulfill- 
ment also. There is no doubt here a use 
of the Spirit in the manner of the Old 
Testament. The Spirit was to equip 
them for special service. Jesus says to 
them, If you are disheartened at the 
magnitude of the task which is commit- 
ted to you, be assured that you have not 
to go to your work alone. He will be 
with you — the Father's promised pres- 
ence. He will furnish you for what is 
before you. More than this He will be 
the power actually at work. It is a prom- 
ise of the establishment of the Kingdom 
of God through them by the Spirit who 
was the invariable accompaniment and 
agent of the Kingdom in prophecy and 
in fact. The Father's promise that in 
those days He would pour out His Spirit 



Mission to the Twelve 97 

upon all flesh ; the Father's promise that 
He would pour His spirit upon His 
spiritual Israel and that they should 
spring up among the grass as willows by 
the water courses ; the Father's promise 
that the Lord Jehovah would come as a 
mighty One and that His arm would rule 
for Him ; that He would come with 
His reward and would " feed His flock 
like a shepherd . . . gather the 
lambs in His arm, and carry them in His 
bosom and gently lead those that have 
their young" (Isa. xliv. 3 ; xl. 11). 

It was a reminder of what almighty 
forces were conspired together that their 
labors should not be in vain. We know 
by the succeeding events how the prom- 
ise was fulfilled. To them however it 
must have seemed simply like a reitera- 
tion of the glorious prophecies of the 
Old Testament about the Messianic 
Kingdom — summed up and represented 
by that one phrase, the promise of the 
Father. 



98 The Holy Spirit 

Indeed in the passage in Acts, they ask 
in words that betray their blindness to 
the spiritual import of His teaching : 
" Dost thou at this time restore the 
Kingdom to Israel ? " (i. 6). This shows 
that the promise of the Father was to 
them synonymous with the establishment 
of the Kingdom. 

The Allusion in Matthew 

It is to be remembered that Matthew 
also in a passage which we have yet to 
discuss records a saying of Jesus which 
in the light of our previous exegesis be- 
comes one with the present one. After 
the commission which He gives to His 
apostles in Galilee He reminds them of 
His presence and power which are to be 
with them. " Lo, I am with you all the 
days, even unto the consummation of the 
age " (Matt, xxviii. 20 Am. R. V. mg.). 
Just as the promise of Jehovah's coming 
was fulfilled by the setting up of Mes- 
siah's Kingdom by the Spirit in the per- 



Mission to the Twelve 99 

son of Jesus (Isa. xl. 10), so the words of 
Jesus promising that He would be with 
them are to be fulfilled by the descent 
of the Holy Spirit to abide in power with 
them forever. We shall have occasion 
to cite this passage again but it is worth 
while in passing to note how rapid and 
unexplained are the changes in person in 
the prophecies of the Messianic time 
both in the Old and New Testaments. 
We should be hopelessly confused if we 
were not elsewhere given the explanation 
in the triune nature of God. 

One other clause in the verse in Luke 
calls our attention. "Tarry ye in the 
city, until ye be clothed with power from 
on high." See also the passage in Acts 
(i. 8), " Ye shall receive power when the 
Holy Spirit is come upon you." In the 
Old Testament the Spirit of God is 
synonymous with superhuman power. 
" Not by might nor by power (human 
might and power) but by my Spirit, saith 
Jehovah of hosts" (Zech. iv. 6). The 



ioo The Holy Spirit 

Spirit in the Old Testament was Jehovah 
in action in the hearts of men. Because 
He was God His Spirit was omnipotent. 
The command was therefore to tarry 
until God's equipment made them invin- 
cible. The promise of the Father in its 
many expressions took no account of hu- 
man insignificance. In some of them it 
was represented as clothing the children 
of the true Israel with supernatural 
powers (e. g., Joel ii. 28). This charge 
is to wait the definite moment when 
those prophecies should be fulfilled in 
their case. Their natural hesitation will 
then all be overcome, their natural weak- 
ness will all be swallowed up in the 
power from on high. It was the definite 
prediction of the Pentecostal miracle. 
It was the announcement of the immi- 
nence of the new era of the Spirit's 
power. He had been in the world be- 
fore, for creation, for the superintending 
of the preparation for the Kingdom, for 
the sanctification of individual believers. 



Mission to the Twelve 101 

But now at the end of the ages He was 
to be revealed in power to establish the 
Kingdom in the earth, to make effective 
in the hearts of His people everywhere 
the benefits of the Father's supreme act 
of redeeming love. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Promise of the Paraclete: The 
Christian Life. 

FT is but natural that the relation of 
I the Spirit to the individual believer 
should be little developed in the 
teaching of Jesus. We should expect to 
find that the apostles to whom the Spirit 
was given to teach them all things would 
be left to define more closely the work 
of the Spirit in sanctification. God's 
method is the natural one with men and 
He has revealed to them as they were 
fitted to receive them the various stages 
of His plan for their redemption. So in 

102 



The Christian Life 103 

this respect we should expect to find that 
until the Christian church was formed 
and the training of Christians actually 
begun, not much would be revealed 
about the specific work of the Spirit in 
affecting the growth of the holy life. 

Accordingly we are prepared for the 
discovery that it is in the writings of the 
apostles, especially of Paul, that the teach- 
ings of our Lord with respect to the 
work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian 
life are developed and supplemented. 

But we need not go so far to find the 
seeds of the teaching. There are in 
the Gospels, particularly in the Gospel 
of John, hints which in the light of 
the later developments are very signifi- 
cant. 

The New Birth revealed by the New Life 

We have already seen that Jesus in 
the conversation with Nicodemus has 
represented the entrance into the King- 
dom under the figure of the new birth. 



Io4 The Holy Spirit 

That is to say, that the service of Christ 
is so revolutionary in its effects upon the 
standards and ideals of men that some 
such phrase is necessary to describe it. 
But a new birth issues in a new life. 
And if the new birth can be effected by 
the Spirit alone, so the new life can be 
lived only in the sphere of the Spirit. As 
the Spirit is the agent who calls into new 
being the dead soul and introduces him 
into the more abundant life, eternal life, 
to use John's phrase, so the same Spirit 
it is who is the sole effective power that 
enables the newborn soul to live. The 
implanted life must bring forth its appro- 
priate fruit. 

Two elements are involved in the new 
birth. Putting off and putting on. The 
latter unavoidably carries with it the idea 
of permanence. The new life is eternal 
life. Does therefore the Spirit's work 
apply only to the initiation of that life or 
not rather to the whole course of it ? 
Unmistakably the latter. The chief pas- 



The Christian Life 105 

sages which teach this truth are of course 
in the verses which describe the promise 
of the Paraclete, but before we discuss 
their bearing on this topic there are sev- 
eral places in which we find their teach- 
ing anticipated. 

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman 

The fourth chapter of John's Gospel 
contains a conversation of Jesus with a 
Samaritan woman in which He reveals 
some of the most fundamental truths of 
the Christian life. The woman of Sychar 
like Nicodemus at first understands Jesus 
literally — in the material sense — and her 
material, formal notions of religion ap- 
pear throughout the chapter. Jesus un- 
covers to her what is the essence of 
religion, in what consists eternal life and 
what is the true relation of man to God. 
The Holy Spirit is not mentioned by 
name, but there can be no doubt that the 
figure of the living water which will 
quench the deepest thirst of the soul, 



106 The Holy Spirit 

which will be in every one who drinks a 
fountain of eternal life, is intended to 
stand either for the Holy Spirit or for 
some larger idea of which the conception 
of the Holy Spirit is a part. Notice the 
wording of the separate verses. Jesus 
seated on the well waits for the return of 
His disciples who have gone into the 
village to purchase food. The woman 
comes to draw water. Jesus uses her 
common bodily need to direct attention 
to the greater needs of her soul. When 
she wonders at His having addressed her, 
a Samaritan, Jesus replies that if she had 
been truly cognizant of God's universal 
gift she would not have thus recognized 
a fictitious barrier between them. Sa- 
maritan and Jew have that in common 
which makes void all the external man- 
made social and national divisions. It is 
their common destiny as possible recipi- 
ents of the gift of God. " If thou 
knewest the gift of God, and who it is 
that saith to thee, Give me to drink ; thou 



The Christian Life 107 

wouldest have asked of Him, and He 
would have given thee living water." 

Is the " Gift " the Holy Spirit or Jesus 
Himself? 

What was the gift of God here referred 
to ? Is it Jesus Himself or is it the fa- 
miliar promise of the Old Testament to 
which Jesus is alluding — the gift of the 
Holy Spirit ? The structure of the sen- 
tence seems at first to point to the former 
alternative. For the " gift of God " 
seems to be parallel with "Him who 
saith to thee." We find Jesus also in the 
conversation with Nicodemus, or the 
evangelist's comment upon it, referring 
to God's only begotten Son as the Father's 
gift to men (iii. 16). Paul also once 
uses the same word which is here trans- 
lated " gift" to refer to the gift of Christ 
(II Cor. ix. 15). But on the other hand 
we have seen that Jesus alludes to the 
Holy Spirit as the Father's chief gift to 
man. The word here used to mean 



108 The Holy Spirit 

"gift" is never employed elsewhere 
in the Gospels, but it is the regular 
word in the Acts for the gift of the 
Spirit of God (Acts ii. 38 ; viii. 20 ; 
x. 45 ; xi. 17). We may therefore just 
as reasonably read the passage in this 
light. " If thou knewest the gift of 
God/' that is, what provision God has 
made for supplying your spiritual thirst : 
"and who it is that saith to thee, 
etc., ,, that is, that One is here who can 
mediate the gift to you ; "thou wouldest 
have asked of Him, and He would have 
given thee living water/' which is the 
description of the gift by its effects. The 
evangelist himself, in the other place 
where Jesus speaks of the living water, 
understands Him to refer to the Holy 
Spirit (John viii. 39). This thought 
therefore should have the preference 
here. 

The Perpetual Fountain 
Accordingly, we have the figure of the 



The Christian Life 109 

perpetual fountain which once sprung 
forth from within the life of the individ- 
ual becomes a never-failing source of bles- 
sedness and joy. This is the same truth 
which the Lord expressed in the conver- 
sation with Nicodemus but it is adapted 
to the different circumstances in which it 
was uttered. There eternal life is set 
forth under the figure of the new birth. 
But birth is the entrance to new life. 
One enters by regeneration into a blessed 
state. We not only enter but we con- 
tinually possess eternal life. The new 
birth implies a continuous life under the 
influence of the same forces which ef- 
fected the birth. This new life we call 
in theological language, sanctification, as 
we call the act of entrance, regeneration, 
or the new birth. So here the initial act 
of taking the living water may be paral- 
leled with the new birth, while the perpet- 
ual fountain of blessing that is introduced 
into the life may be set over against the 
continuous, upward, progressive, sanctify- 



no The Holy Spirit 

ing process that is worked in our hearts 
when we have entered the Kingdom. 

What then does Jesus say about the 
Christian life ? Just this. That to be- 
come a Christian one needs but a draught 
of the living water. That the Holy Spirit 
is to us what water is to the bodily thirst. 
It is living, fresh, and invigorating water 
flowing ever to satisfy the thirst of our 
souls. No aspiration of our souls for 
what is highest and best need ever go 
unsatisfied. No longing for holiness and 
likeness to Christ but may, through this 
living self -perpetuating fountain, have its 
appropriate response. The gift of the 
Spirit is once for all. This fountain is 
not intermittent. We may grow in ca- 
pacity for the living water. We doubt- 
less will learn to appreciate its health- 
giving qualities, but when we have once 
truly partaken of its refreshing stream it 
will be in us a well or fountain of water 
springing up unto eternal life. The Holy 
Spirit is ours. Nothing is required for 



The Christian Life 1 1 1 

His perpetual and inspiring presence but 
the willingness to call upon His ever 
present aid. New thirst will send us 
anew to the fountain. But now we have 
learned the path which leads to its side. 
Jesus therefore teaches here the sure, in- 
evitable progress of the true Christian in 
the ways of God. He uses a figure 
which without undue straining leads us 
to the conclusion that the Christian has 
not to agonize in prayer for the gift of 
the Spirit. The Spirit is in our hearts. 
It was He who brought us to Christ and 
He will not leave us, but will inhabit us 
with ever more pervading power as we 
yield ourselves up to Him. It is cer- 
tainly a real comfort to the discouraged 
man who sees his desires for holiness con- 
tinually thwarted, who feels the obstacles 
to righteousness in his own heart, who 
has known the agony of battle with the 
old man of sin within him, to know that 
our Lord has likened his growth in the 
things of the Kingdom to the upspring- 



1 1 2 The Holy Spirit 

ing of a perpetual fountain which shall 
truly flow until his whole nature has been 
purified and cleansed. 

A Life-giving Fountain 

But we have more than this on the 
word of Jesus. There is a further prom- 
ise in the passage in the seventh chapter 
to which we have already referred. " If 
any man thirst, let him come unto me 
and drink. He that believeth on me, as 
the Scripture hath said, from within him 
shall flow rivers of living water' ' (vii. 
37, 38). Every true Christian longs to be 
of service in the Kingdom. He feels the 
desire to live no longer unto self, but unto 
Him who for his sake died and rose again 
(II. Cor. v. 15). But there comes inevita- 
bly the thought of unfitness. The world's 
notions of material equipment are apt to 
discourage his endeavor. Others have 
more of wealth and talent. But Jesus 
answers such a thought. These rivers of 
living water will flow not from within 



The Christian Life 113 

him who has much of this world's trea- 
sures of gold or of talent, but from within 
him who believes in Him. 

Here John expressly identifies the liv- 
ing water with the Holy Spirit. "But 
this spake He of the Spirit, which they 
that believed on Him were to receive : 
for the Spirit was not yet given ; because 
Jesus was not glorified " (v. 39). By this 
John does not mean that there was as yet 
no gift of the Spirit but only that the new 
era of the Spirit had not yet arrived, for 
the peculiar period of His activity was 
not yet come. The promise awaits the 
glorification of Jesus. His death, resur- 
rection, and ascension to glory are logi- 
cally prior to any participation in their 
benefits. John therefore understands 
Jesus to mean that whoever, on the basis 
of His sacrifice, receives the Holy Spirit 
into his life, whoever has tasted of the 
living water, shall become himself a foun- 
tain of blessedness and service, cheering, 
uplifting everyone with whom he comes 

H 



ii4 The Holy Spirit 

in contact. He will receive through his 
belief in Jesus a vital impulse, an inter- 
pretation of the meaning and the purpose 
of life so new and revolutionary that it 
can only be compared to the bursting 
forth of a flowing spring of water out of 
a dry and desert place. He will himself 
become a source of eternal life. 

The Significance of the Figure 

This figure had special appropriateness 
here just as it had at the well of Jacob. 
Every morning during the feast of Taber- 
nacles the priest went down to the pool 
of Siloam and drew from it water which 
he carried in a golden urn and poured out 
before the Lord. This was a sign of the 
manner in which the Lord had graciously 
supplied their thirst in the desert wander- 
ing. It looked backward. But as we 
learn from the Talmud the Jews also 
connected the ceremony with the prom- 
ise in Isaiah (xii. 3) " With joy shall ye 
draw water out of the wells of salvation." 



The Christian Life 115 

It consequently looked forward as well. 
It was a peculiarly typical act — typical of 
God's former leading of them and of His 
promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit 
in the glad Messianic time. Jesus says 
to them practically : — Henceforth this 
ceremonial act need no longer look for- 
ward, for the promise which it celebrates 
has already come to pass. I am the ful- 
fillment both of the type and the prom- 
ise. The type looked forward to me ; 
the promise was a prediction of the bless- 
ing which should come into the world 
when the promised Messiah should ap- 
pear. The rivers from the desert ground 
are ready to spring forth. Just as it took 
only an act of faith on Moses' part to 
cause your thirst to be supplied, so now 
it takes only an act of faith on the be- 
liever's part to cause his spiritual aspira- 
tions to be satisfied. Such a fountain will 
flow forth from within him as will not 
only be the satisfaction of his own desires 
but it will extend and increase its life- 



u6 The Holy Spirit 

giving so long as it flows and be the 
means of life to other desert lives. The 
life that is dead in sin, fruitless, unhelp- 
ful, becomes through this living water 
poured into it, that is, through the Holy 
Spirit, not only itself new and living, but 
a missionary force spreading the refresh- 
ing influences on every hand. 

The Paraclete Chapters confirm these 
Promises 

But these blessed truths of Jesus were 
but hints given in the case of the Samari- 
tan woman in secret, and at Tabernacles 
in veiled form because those who heard 
were not yet ready for the fuller teaching 
of the new era of the Spirit. In the Para- 
clete chapters Jesus makes plain to the 
minds of His disciples what He had be- 
fore spoken in parable. They said, " Lo, 
now speakest thou plainly, and speakest 
no dark saying' ' (7rapot/xta, xvi. 29). 

So we find in these chapters abundant 
teaching about the Spirit's place and func- 



The Christian Life 1 1 7 

tion in the Christian life. Much of what 
we have said in the previous chapter about 
the Spirit and the apostles may be applied 
with equal force to the individual be- 
liever. For though some of these prom- 
ises were no doubt meant for the apostles 
in a special sense yet they have for us 
also their undoubted application. Just as 
the Paraclete was given to recall to the 
minds of the apostles what they had ac- 
tually heard Him say, so we may believe 
He is given to us to make real in our 
minds the words and the person of Jesus. 
When we are in deepest discouragement 
with the result of our labors, either for 
self or for the Kingdom, it is the Spirit 
who recalls us to the Saviour. 

So the Spirit is also our teacher. We 
may on the strength of this promise rely 
upon Him to open our eyes and show us 
the truth. The Spirit of the truth is our 
Paraclete no less truly than He was theirs, 
though the special functions which we 
may be called upon to perform are dif- 



n8 The Holy Spirit 

f erent. So also though we have not been 
with Christ from the beginning in the 
flesh as were the twelve (xv. 27), yet have 
we also personal experience of His power 
in our lives of which through the Spirit 
we may testify to others. 

These three chapters of John's Gospel 
(xiv., xv., xvi.), are utterly incomprehen- 
sible without the teaching of the Para- 
clete. That is the central part of them. 
The disciples' comfort in view of His 
departure is the Spirit. Prayer for what- 
ever they shall need is answered because 
the Holy Spirit helps them to pray 
and guides their judgment (xiv. 13 ). 
The peace which is definitely promised 
(xiv. 27) and which radiates through all 
the chapters is a possibility because of 
the promise of the Spirit and only so. 
The charge to abide in Him as the 
branch in the vine is only possible to 
the disciples after His departure or 
ever for us through the Holy Spirit. 
Fruit-bearing for Him is only possi- 



The Christian Life. 119 

ble if the fountain of life-giving water 
has entered our lives. Persecutions for 
His sake will follow, but the Holy Spirit 
will furnish in that hour the words for 
our testimony. More than this He will 
convince the world, the unsympathetic, 
persecuting world, of sin and of right- 
eousness and of judgment. Your labor 
though apparently in vain will be vindi- 
cated by that same Spirit. So that the 
result for the Christian of the Lord's 
teaching about the Paraclete is to give 
him the notion, the precious promise of 
a great and all-powerful helper for every 
time of discouragement and trial. A 
guide in difficulty, peace in trouble, and 
a leader and advocate who shall make the 
Christian's cause His own and whose 
pleading will not be in vain. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Promise of the Paraclete : the 
Conviction of the JVorld. 

rHE " world " in the writings of 
John is the world of human be- 
ings considered apart from God. 
Apartness from God naturally flows into 
the thought of separation from God. 
These human beings are fallen beings 
and they naturally impress their character 
upon the order which is their field of ac- 
tivity. The world then is the present 
evil world as opposed to God. It is 
God's rival in working out His glorious 
plan to redeem men (John i. 10 ; xvii. 
1 20 



Conviction of the World 1 2 1 

25 ; I. John iii. 1). Yet God loved it and 
sent His Son to bear away its sin (John i. 
29), who also became its Saviour (xii. 47). 
The world was separated into two por- 
tions by the coming of Christ. Some 
were chosen out of the world by Him 
and some hate Him (xv. 19). So Christ 
and His disciples on the one hand are 
opposed by the world. 

John therefore uses the word to denote 
the evil forces as a whole that are opposed 
to Christ. It is the rebel world to which 
He refers when He uses the term. And 
yet it is important that those who belong 
to the world may become reconciled to 
God and may cease to be of the world 
by becoming united to Christ. The 
rebels may lay down their arms. This 
is the mission on which the disciples are 
sent into the world (xvii. 16-23). 

It was important, therefore, that the 
apostles and through them the Christian 
church should have some notion of the 
relation in which the Spirit would stand 



122 The Holy Spirit 

to this world as opposed to God. They 
were utterly insufficient for its conquest. 
The world hated them — they were not 
of it. They were left in it for a specific 
purpose. What should be their attitude 
towards it ? Jesus makes a part of His 
teaching about the Paraclete to bear upon 
His relation to the world, the rebel world 
opposed to God and to the plan for its 
redemption. 

Jesus' Departure was Necessary 

It is necessary to observe in the first 
place, that all this later teaching is de- 
pendent upon what He has already made 
plain to them — that He must go away. 
He reiterates that His departure is neces- 
sary (xvi. 5, 7). The disciples must be 
made to realize that Jesus' life on earth 
was but the preparation for that era of 
the Spirit when the glorified Christ 
should through the Spirit win men to 
Himself. That era was the real climax 
of the history of God's purpose to re- 



Conviction of the World 1 23 

deem men. As John the Baptist said, 
" He must increase but I must decrease/' 
so in a real sense Jesus must renounce the 
personal adherence of His disciples to His 
bodily presence in order that they might 
truly receive His spiritual presence. It 
was no longer to be Jesus in the flesh. 
Henceforth it was to be the glorified 
Saviour. And this glorified Saviour it 
was the Spirit's mission to reveal to men. 
Jesus came to be the Saviour of the world. 
He was the first to break this untried path. 
The end of His course was not incarna- 
tion but glory. Thus does He become 
the " first-born among many brethren." 
The truth that He came to utter was a 
spiritual one, the Kingdom that He came 
to found was spiritual. It was a spiritual 
relation that He came to make possible. 
Hence anything that called attention to 
the material must be removed. Any 
possible misconception of the spiritual 
character of His mission must be averted. 
Any attempt to localize Christianity must 



124 The Holy Spirit 

be guarded against. His work was for 
the world and was to continue through- 
out the age. His human life must there- 
fore become glorified and spiritualized 
and so be made a matter of faith for un- 
born millions, who could not otherwise 
know Him than as a spiritual presence. 

Then too, it was as a crucified Saviour 
that He was to fulfill His mission. In 
God's plan the death of Jesus was neces- 
sary to complete His work. Not until 
His work for men had been finished on 
the cross could His work in men be 
carried forward. So that the disciples 
not only could not become witnesses of 
Him as Son of God until His work as in- 
carnate Son had been done, could not be- 
come heralds of salvation until salvation 
was accomplished, but they could not 
themselves enjoy the fullness of the hope 
in Christ until He had departed, via Cal- 
vary, for He died for them as well as for 
the world. And so He says again in this 
chapter, " It is expedient for you that I go 



Conviction of the IVorld 1 25 

away, for if I go not away the Paraclete 
will not come/' 

Meaning of the Word " Convict " 

" When He has come, He will convict 
the world in respect of sin, and of right- 
eousness, and of judgment :" This word 
" convict' ' (ikeyxco) means more than re- 
prove, or convince. The translation in 
the Revised Versions is not too strong. 
It implies that what the Spirit says, the 
world will recognize as just. It alludes 
to the answer of conscience to the voice 
of God which concurs in the judgment 
and makes every man his own judge as 
well as the object of the justice of God. 
But notice also that conviction does not 
carry with it conversion. Some individ- 
uals out of this rebel world the Spirit will 
undoubtedly win to Himself. Indeed 
we may believe that there will be many 
and that there have been innumerable 
multitudes not only convicted but con- 
verted, but the world as John uses the 



126 The Holy Spirit 

term is and will be still hostile. The 
promise is that the world shall stand 
self-condemned before these men, the 
heralds of the Kingdom. There is no 
other promise now. There is no other 
excuse for the man who is striving to 
reach the world through " the foolish- 
ness of preaching. " 

Conviction of Sin 

"In respect of sin." Jesus Himself 
interprets the meaning of these phrases 
( vv. 9-11 ). " Because they believe not on 
me." Can we still proclaim the old- 
fashioned truth that rejection of Jesus is 
the crowning sin ? Jesus makes the 
daring statement that the world was all 
astray concerning the nature of sin. The 
world conceived of sin as residing in the 
infraction of commandments. Jesus says 
the Spirit will show men that it consists 
not in sinful act, but in sinful attitude — 
attitude to God — to truth. So that the 
chief, the determinative sin of Jesus' day 



Conviction of the World 127 

and, shall we not say, of our day also, was 
in maintaining an attitude of indifference 
to Him who was the crowning revelation 
of God and the truth incarnate. It was 
no arbitrary condition which was thus set 
up, but one which was in the nature of the 
case absolutely significant. Sin is oppo- 
sition to God — to truth. God has mani- 
fested Himself — truth has been revealed. 
Attitude to God and to truth is revealed 
by attitude to the manifestation of God 
— as the revelation of the truth. So 
there is no need to mention other sins. 
It is not sins but sin with respect to which 
the world needed conviction. 

Conviction of Righteousness 

"In respect of righteousness. ,, No 
less than in respect of sin did the world 
entertain false notions in respect of right- 
eousness. Conformity was the world's 
standard and the world of that day boasted 
of its righteousness by conformity. Jesus 
had already said that it was worthless 



128 The Holy Spirit 

(Matt. v. 20). His mission had been to 
provide a righteousness by which men 
could be pronounced righteous in the 
sight of an all-holy God. Hence when 
His work has been done and He has gone 
to His Father with that righteousness 
provided, the work of the Spirit will be to 
convince the world that it is God's gift 
and not man's achievement. 

Conviction of Judgment 

" In respect of judgment, because the 
prince of this world hath been judged. " 
Jesus was at that moment under the ad- 
verse judgment of the world represented 
by the Sanhedrin. The next day they 
would put Him to death in the execution 
of it. But they were exulting prema- 
turely. That act was really the act of 
Satan, the prince of this world. It was 
to be the moment of his potential defeat 
and not of victory. The prince of this 
world had already been judged and con- 
demned, and from that cross would begin 



Conviction of the World 129 

and continue to go forth the power of 
the Spirit of God — the influence that 
should undermine the prince's apparent 
power and make actual the victory now 
already pronounced and potential. With 
such words as these does Jesus reassure 
His half -halting disciples as they tremble 
at the thought of facing the hostile world. 
No more than when He Himself was 
present with them in the body were they 
to be left alone. The great heathen as 
well as the Jewish world, rebellious and 
wicked, was to be convicted of its sin, 
taught a true righteousness, and made to 
tremble before the just judgment of a 
holy God. And so He could sincerely 
tell them to be of good cheer for He had 
thus overcome the world (xvi. 33). 



CHAPTER X 

The Promise of the Paraclete : His 

Relatioit to the Father and to the 

Son. 

J * JVT'E have neglected certain aspects 
i'3' of the promise of the Paraclete 
in view of the inevitable ques- 
tion which arises in our minds as to the 
nature of the Spirit. One who had such 
exalted offices to fulfill must in His per- 
son, if we may so say, be also highly ex- 
alted. If we had not explicit teaching 
and direct references of Jesus to the per- 
sonality of the Spirit we must have in- 
ferred it from the mission He was given 
130 



Relation to the Godhead 131 

to perform. But we are not left to con- 
jecture upon so important a subject. 

The Holy Spirit a Distinct Person 

And we are led first to affirm that in 
the teaching of Jesus the Spirit is a per- 
son distinct from the Father and from 
the Son. Not all the passages in which 
reference is made to the Spirit teach this 
truth plainly. For this reason some have 
denied it, holding that the Spirit is either 
simply an influence which comes from 
God or that the Spirit is the personal 
presence of the glorified Jesus. Such 
passages are those which speak of the 
Spirit as coming upon one, or of one be- 
ing anointed by the Spirit, born of the 
Spirit or the like. But there are other 
references which make both of these in- 
terpretations impossible if the plain mean- 
ing of words is not to be disregarded. 

1. Actions are attributed to Him and 
functions ascribed to Him which would 
be almost if not quite meaningless if He 



132 The Holy Spirit 

were not a distinct person. "It is not 
ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father 
that speaketh in you" (Matt. x. 20 and 
parr.). " He shall convict the world of 
sin, etc. (John xvi. 8 ff.). "He shall teach 
you all things," <( He shall bear witness 
of me " (John xiv. 26 ; xv. 26). These 
are actions requiring for their perform- 
ance a sentient, willing personality. 

2. The personal pronoun " he " is used 
to describe the Spirit. The word which 
we translate "spirit" is in Greek of the 
neuter gender. It is a sign therefore 
that special emphasis is intended to be 
laid upon the masculine personal nature 
of the Paraclete when in several instances 
the masculine personal pronoun is used 
in referring to the Spirit and to the neu- 
ter relative, both of which precede (John 
xvi. 13, 14 ; xiv. 26 ; xv. 26). 

3. He is joined with the Father and 
the Son, both conceived of as separate 
persons, so that the reasonable conclusion 
is that the Spirit is also a distinct person 



Relation to the Godhead 133 

(Matt, xxviii. 19 ; Matt. xii. 31, 32). In 
the latter passage we have also a further 
confirmation in the words of the refer- 
ence to the Spirit. Blasphemy against the 
Spirit is blasphemy against a person. You 
cannot blaspheme an influence. 

His Relation to the Father 

In John xv. 26 a phrase is used which 
has been much discussed in its bearing 
upon inter-Trinitarian relations, " which 
proceedeth from the Father." The 
Greek church has used it as a proof 
text for one of their chief differences 
with other Christian churches. They 
have held from early times that the pas- 
sage means that the Spirit proceeded from 
the Father and not from the Son. They 
consequently rejected on the basis of this 
text the clauses of the Athanasian and 
later creeds in which confession was 
made of a belief in the procession of the 
Spirit from the Son. But a closer glance 
at the words used will show that no 



134 The Holy Spirit 

teaching is here intended as to the mu- 
tual relation of being between the per- 
sons of the Godhead. The word trans- 
lated " from " does not mean out of but 
away from in the sense of being sent on a 
mission. The phrase refers to the offi- 
cial relation of the Spirit to the Father 
and not to the essential relation. It is in- 
tended to teach that just as Jesus had 
come from the Father to accomplish 
His great redemptive purposes so the 
Spirit was to come from the Father on a 
mission of equal definiteness. The words 
are part of the message of comfort to the 
disciples. Through the Spirit their rela- 
tion to the Father will not be less close 
than when Christ was with them. 

We are no doubt to see in this state- 
ment a revelation of a relation to the 
Father which is in some sense subordi- 
nate. Whether this subordination is a 
real one or whether we are to look upon 
it as simply an economical inferiority we 
cannot say from these words of Jesus. 



Relation to the Godhead 135 

But the latter is implied in the other 
places where the Father and the Spirit 
are joined. The Son will pray to the 
Father and He will send another Para- 
clete. That is, the Spirit is to come from 
God as Jesus had come and to do the same 
things for men that Jesus had done, /. e., 
to take His place. Again, He is called the 
Spirit of the truth. Not a spirit or agent 
of the truth, but He is by reason of His 
nature the very truth itself in spiritual 
form. Jesus proclaimed Himself to be 
the truth, a declaration that was in itself 
a claim to divinity. So the Spirit of the 
truth as the revealer and agent of abso- 
lute truth, of the very essence of things 
could be no less than God. Still further, 
His work is a divine work. He convicts 
of sin. He begets a new and super- 
natural life. As the author of life He per- 
forms the functions of Deity. The sin 
against the Holy Spirit is also represented 
to be sin against a person of divine value. 
All sin is against God; hence to sin 



136 The Holy Spirit 

against the Holy Spirit is to sin against 
God. When, finally, Jesus brings the 
Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit 
into a single expression and commands a 
baptism into one name, the name, not the 
names of the Father, etc., He simply ex- 
presses naturally and with apparent un- 
consciousness the essential Deity not only 
of the Father and of the Son but of the 
Spirit also. 

Relation to the Son 

We have already in the preceding sec- 
tion attempted to unfold the teaching of 
Jesus about the essential relation of the 
Spirit to the Son. Jesus is God — the 
Spirit is God. But there is a relation also 
of office which is very definitely drawn out 
in these chapters which have for their 
chief subject the promise of the Para- 
clete. The first mention of the Spirit in 
this connection is a definite promise that 
He will take the place of Jesus. " I will 
pray the Father and He shall give you 



Relation to the Godhead 137 

another Paraclete " (John xiv. 16). That 
is, whatever of help and of comfort I 
have been to you will hereafter be sup- 
plied by Him who comes to be in my 
place. Throughout these chapters we 
find Him referred to by Jesus as intended 
to be His real representative after His 
glorification. He is not to supersede 
Jesus but to carry on and bring to ful- 
fillment the work which Jesus had al- 
ready begun with them. They had been 
associated with Jesus in many precious 
hours and had learned from Him many 
precious lessons. The Spirit would cause 
that none of those experiences should 
fail of its intended effect. For through 
Him not one should be lost to them ; 
He would bring to their remembrance 
all that He had said to them (xiv. 26). 
We may even say that the work of the 
Spirit as revealed to these men would be 
more important than the work of Jesus 
had been, as the work of making the 
seed fruitful and germinant is of more 



138 The Holy Spirit 

importance than the sowing of the seed. 
For He is to bear witness of Christ. He 
is not to speak of Himself. But He 
shall take of the things of Christ and 
show them unto His own (xvi. 14). 

Jesus in other words intrusts the en- 
tire work of carrying on His influence in 
the world and of making it persistent and 
effective to that same Spirit, the Paraclete. 
What men have known of Jesus from 
that day to this, that is, what they know 
of His work and His revelation of the 
Father's love, and by experimental knowl- 
edge of His gracious redemption, they 
have known by the Holy Spirit. 

" He shall glorify me " (John xvi. 14). 
Here is one further reference to the re- 
lation of the Paraclete to the Son. Jesus 
could wait in simple patience for His 
glory. He could go to a shameful death, 
confident that though the spite of men 
was being wreaked upon Him and His 
name was not respected but rather hated, 
yet in the new era of the Spirit of God 



Relation to the Godhead 139 

He would come to His own. Glory 
would be His through the agency of the 
Paraclete. And so it is, wherever the 
name of Jesus has received its appropri- 
ate homage, wherever He has been hon- 
ored as God's incarnate Son, wherever He 
has been glorified, there we may see the 
graciously effective work of the Paraclete. 
As Christ is the truth so the Paraclete is 
the truth's agent to make that truth ef- 
fective in the world (xiv. 17 ; xvi. 13 ; 
see also I. John v. 7). 

The Spirit the Medium of Fellowship with 
God 

Jesus makes it abundantly plain through- 
out these chapters that whatever of fel- 
lowship with the Father or with the Son 
men were hereafter to enjoy they were 
to enjoy through the Spirit of God, for 
their intercourse was henceforth to be 
spiritual. Jesus said to the woman at the 
well, " God is a Spirit : and they that wor- 
ship Him must worship Him in spirit and 



140 The Holy Spirit 

in truth " (John iv. 24). That is, worship 
being communion with a spiritual being 
must take place in the sphere of the 
Spirit. Heretofore men had received 
many material manifestations of God : 
the theophanies of the Old Testament ; 
the presence of specially inspired and dele- 
gated men, the prophets ; and now at 
the last His own Son in the flesh ; but 
henceforth men were to know Him and 
approach Him in the Spirit. One great 
purpose of Jesus' coming into the world 
was to reveal the Father, and no other 
news about Him was more important 
than the knowledge that He is a spirit- 
ual being and must be worshipped and 
served in the sphere of the Spirit. So 
that " spirit with spirit may meet." This 
takes out of worship all perfunctoriness, 
banishes the possibility of hypocrisy and 
deceit, and opens up a real and vital union 
with God. And all this according to 
Jesus is accomplished by the Paraclete. 
Judas asks, " What is come to pass 



Relation to the Godhead 141 

that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, 
and not unto the world?" (John xiv. 
22). Jesus answers, " If a man love me 
he will keep my word : and my Father 
will love him, and we will come unto 
him (by the Spirit), and make our abode 
with him." Devotion to the will of 
Jesus, keeping His word, will admit a 
man to this spiritual union with the 
Father and with the Son. In the day 
of the Spirit's power God is with us not 
less really but rather more so, than when 
Jesus was present in the flesh. 

We can see therefore a relation of the 
Spirit to the Son, in some respects appar- 
ently subordinate, being sent at His 
prayer and in His name and even by 
Him (xiv. 16, 26 ; xvi. 7) ; nevertheless 
we see Him associated in a relation of 
absolute equality with the Son, associ- 
ated in the work of redemption just as 
vitally as either the Father or the Son. 
The secret of this intimacy of relation 
we cannot fully grasp. We may, how- 



142 The Holy Spirit 

ever, express it to ourselves by the term 
which has served the church for many 
hundred years as the confession of her 
faith. The Trinity, the Triune God, the 
three Persons in the Godhead, — the same 
in substance, equal in power and glory. 

This conclusion is confirmed by the 
last word of Jesus on the subject of the 
Spirit which we shall discuss in the next 
chapter. The Great Commission (Matt. 
xxviii. 19) ends with the command to 
baptize in the name of the Father and of 
the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the 
light of what has been said by Jesus about 
Himself and about the Spirit these words 
become intelligible. They associate the 
Three in one phrase as the conjoint trust- 
worthy sponsors for the act of baptism. 
Because of this God, Father, Son and 
Spirit, men are given the privilege of 
baptism, and because of such a God 
comes the certainty that the holy symbol 
will not be wholly symbol, but will stand 
for a real and blessed fact. 



CHAPTER XI 

The Great Commission. 

rHE last interview of Jesus with 
His disciples in Galilee before 
His ascension was marked by an 
event which for magnificent daring, for 
splendid presumption must have revealed 
Him as an impostor had He been less 
than He claimed to be. On the eve of 
His departure from His little band of dis- 
ciples He bids them go out and make 
converts of all nations and adds the com- 
mand to baptize them in the name of the 
Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit. 

143 



144 The Holy Spirit 

It is not necessary to suppose that in 
these words Jesus prescribes a formula to 
be used in baptism. It is, however, nat- 
ural that they should soon be elevated 
into a formula by those who loved Him. 
And this was what actually occurred. 
Jesus is not just now teaching men what 
is their relation either to the Father or to 
the Son or to the Spirit. He is assuming 
what He has previously taught. The 
point of the passage is that it is a com- 
mand to preach truths which they had 
already learned. They had been the re- 
cipients of His instruction for two years 
and more. In this interview He is tell- 
ing them what was the purpose of that 
closeness of personal relation which they 
alone had enjoyed. They were being 
trained for the work of discipling the 
nations. What they had learned they 
were now to teach. So Jesus does not 
expressly say what relation should subsist 
between the Father and the believer, be- 
tween the Son or Spirit and the believer. 



The Great Commission 145 



That has already been made sufficiently 
plain. He simply alludes to the fact that 
there are relations which should exist and 
allows their memories to prompt the 
thoughts which should fill the gap. He 
says, " In the name of. " The "name ,J 
stands for the thing or person named. 
It alludes to character. " In the name " 
of a person means in virtue of all that 
that person is. "The name of Jesus," 
for example, in the New Testament is a 
short and pregnant expression to denote 
all that He is. So here, instead of saying 
fully that those who were to be baptized 
must be in a relation of love to the 
Father, penitently accepting His gracious 
pardon for sin ; and of trust with respect 
to Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice on their 
behalf has made that pardon possible ; 
and of hospitality toward the Holy Spirit 
who by His work in their hearts has 
made the world's Redeemer their Re- 
deemer ; instead of saying this which they 
had been taught many a time, He simply 
J 



146 The Holy Spirit 

names the three persons to whom the 
new disciples were to confess allegiance 
as one God. Jesus does not expressly 
define the necessary relation of the be- 
liever to each of the Three. For this 
was the ceremony of entrance to the 
Kingdom. Admitting men to the King- 
dom u in the name " of these Three 
was admitting them in virtue of the rela- 
tion which each of the Three bore to 
the Kingdom. Jesus has proclaimed 
God as Father. He shall be confessed 
therefore as Father by those who seek 
admission to the Kingdom. This implies 
repentance for all the old rebellious, un- 
filial manner of life. Jesus has claimed 
to be and has shown Himself to be the 
only begotten Son of the Father and by 
His death has fulfilled the mission of the 
Father to save men. He therefore is the 
mediator of this new fellowship with 
God. The Spirit who has been steadily 
promised as the accompaniment of the 
Messianic age has been further defined 



The Great Commission 147 

as the originator of the new life and the 
personal friend and advocate of the can- 
didate for admission to the Kingdom. 
Confession of Him also must therefore 
be made in baptism. None of these ele- 
ments is unnecessary. Without this three- 
fold equipment their admission to disciple- 
ship would be a meaningless form. This 
is doctrine reduced to its lowest terms. 
Without it baptism would be empty and 
without significance. Jesus therefore 
binds the Spirit to the Father and the 
Son in a necessary unity. 

These words have been challenged in 
recent years on the ground that they are 
not conceivable in the circumstances. Of 
course this view generally depends also 
on the rejection of John's records of the 
teaching of Jesus. For it is difficult to 
receive at its face value what Jesus said 
as recorded by John with respect to His 
relation to the Father, and with respect 
to the relation of the Paraclete to Father 
and to Son, and at the same time to be 



148 The Holy Spirit 

surprised at this intimate association of 
the Three under one name. 

But the words as they stand are con- 
sistent with the majesty of the scene. 
They cannot be a reflection of a later 
age. This was a commission which our 
Lord was giving to His church through 
her representatives. He is revealing to 
His followers of every age their mission 
to the world. He is announcing the 
reality of the truth which He earlier fore- 
told in parables like that of the Leaven 
and of the Mustard Seed. Was it not, 
therefore, harmonious with the character 
of the scene that He should thus gather 
up all that He had taught about God into 
one living and glowing phrase, in one 
sentence preserve and proclaim the full 
significance of the message they were go- 
ing out to herald ? Is it altogether out 
of keeping with the nature of the case 
that He should connect that sentence 
with the very act by which converts were 
to be initiated into the Christian brother- 



The Great Commission 149 

hood ? Jesus was never willing to gain 
followers at the expense of principle. 
He never wanted disciples who were not 
willing to accept the doctrinal significance 
of the step they were taking. This last 
address was no less exacting than His 
former habit. Men were to be dis- 
cipled, taught to believe upon Him, but 
they were to be instructed that disciple- 
ship with Him would necessarily involve 
acceptance of His teachings about God 
in His person as Father, in His person as 
Son and in His person as Holy Spirit. 

We may even say that some such words 
as these must have been used by Jesus be- 
fore He left the earth. We cannot ex- 
plain on any other supposition the im- 
mediate and general use of Trinitarian 
language by the writers of the New Tes- 
tament epistles, nor can we account for 
the early Trinitarian formula for baptism, 
nor the presence of the idea at least in 
the Apostles' Creed. There is not only 
not the least improbability that these 



150 The Holy Spirit 

words were spoken by Jesus as recorded 
by Matthew, but if they had not been 
recorded we must have known that some 
revelation of this character was given, or 
else have been at a loss to explain how 
all these things came to pass. We should 
have guessed at the fact had it not been 
recorded. 

But now if this be the case what defi- 
nite teaching of Jesus concerning the 
Holy Spirit have we in the Great Com- 
mission ? It is the confirmation of what 
we have found to be the fact in John's 
Gospel. Namely, that now that Christ 
has risen we are in the new era of the 
Spirit's power and that His work is nec- 
essary to make effective what Jesus has 
done. We see that at a time when atten- 
tion is called to the actual work of the 
extension of the Kingdom of God in the 
world on the basis of the sacrificial work 
of the Saviour, it was necessary for full 
statement of the truth to join the Spirit 
with the Father and the Son as directly 



The Great Commission 151 

co-responsible with them for the progress 
of the Kingdom. This is not dwelt 
upon. That has already been done. As 
was natural, Jesus simply alludes to for- 
mer teaching and in this summary man- 
ner testifies again to its importance. 



CHAPTER XII 

Summary. 

rO sum up in brief our findings as to 
the teaching of Jesus concerning 
the Holy Spirit, we find that — 
First, in the Old Testament the Spirit 
was revealed in His cosmic, in His theo- 
cratic, and in His individual relations. 
That the second of these relations is by 
far the most prominent. That the Spirit 
was the divine superintendent, ab intra, 
in the work of redemption, filling prophet 
and judge, artificer and king for their 
work of preparation for the Kingdom. 
That even in Old Testament times 
152 



Summary 1 53 

there was promised a Messiah whose 
age should be marked by a mighty out- 
pouring of the Spirit when new and 
strange forces should possess men and 
the knowledge of God should be spread 
abroad in new and wonderful measure. 

That as yet the Spirit was not revealed 
in His personal character, but was always 
spoken of as the power or energy of God 
working in the world and particularly in 
His chosen ones to accomplish His wise 
and holy purposes. 

Second, that the secret of the peculiar 
distribution of the New Testament teach- 
ing about the Spirit is due to the peculiar 
relation of Jesus' earthly work to the ob- 
ject of His mission, being in a sense pre- 
paratory and having to be completed by 
His death and resurrection, when first the 
world could enter into the full benefit of 
His life and death through the Spirit. 

Third, that according to Jesus Himself 
He had been prepared for His Messianic 
work by an anointing of the Holy Spirit 



154 The Holy Spirit 

as the Old Testament prophets had pre- 
dicted. That this possibly carries with it 
the sanction of Jesus upon the New Tes- 
tament accounts of His conception and 
birth, and almost certainly involves His 
testimony to the Spirit's activity at His 
baptism as recorded by the evangelists. 

Fourth, that with respect to the King- 
dom of God Jesus also reiterates the 
teaching of the prophets as to the close 
connection of the Kingdom with the 
Spirit and in dependence upon it re- 
bukes the Pharisees because they had 
not argued the presence of the Kingdom 
and hence of the Messiah from the signs 
which He wrought in the power of the 
Spirit. That entrance into the Kingdom 
is effected by the transforming power of 
the Spirit, so revolutionary that it may 
fairly be called a new birth. 

Fifth, that the sin against the Holy 
Spirit was a sin against the redemptive 
purpose of God. It had reference to 
the Spirit because of His activity in the 



Summary 155 

plan to redeem men. That the sin prob- 
ably consisted in the persistent and final 
rejection of Jesus as the impersonation 
of a redeeming God. 

Sixth, that Jesus in one place at least 
makes explicit confirmation of this view 
of the importance of the Spirit in the 
Christian life, by assuming that it is 
God's chief gift to men, by which all 
other heavenly gifts are received and 
appreciated. 

Seventh, that both the Synoptic Gospels 
and John record that Jesus announced 
the imminence of the new era of the 
Spirit when the wonderful promises of 
the Old Covenant should be fulfilled. 
The name He gives to the Spirit in John 
is the Paraclete, a pregnant expression to 
indicate the climax of helpful power. 
That this promise had special reference 
to the twelve apostles and was intended 
in the first place to comfort their natural 
sorrow at the prospect of His death. 
That it was then intended to reassure 



156 The Holy Spirit 

them in the face of the enormous re- 
sponsibilities which were upon them. 
The church was safe for the Paraclete 
would abide forever. As the Spirit of 
truth He would also quicken their facul- 
ties and guide them in the perception and 
in the transmission of the truth. 

Eighth, that Jesus taught also the im- 
portance of the work of the Spirit in the 
life of the individual Christian. That a 
new birth implies a new continuous life, 
is in order to eternal life. That the water 
of life implies continual supply of increas- 
ing soul-thirst. That participation in this 
eternal life, possession of this Spirit, issues 
in service, and admits to the peace which 
the world cannot give. 

Ninth, that the Paraclete has also a 
mission to the world, the hostile rebel 
world, which shall relieve His disciples 
of the responsibility of the world's recep- 
tion or rejection of Jesus. Their duty is 
to present ; His function is to convict. 
That this conviction is to render the 



Summary 157 

world without excuse, as it consists in so 
awakening conscience as to make the 
world its own judge. 

Tenth, Jesus teaches that the Holy Spirit 
is a person distinct from the Father and 
from the Son. That while for economic 
reasons He is represented as subordinate 
to the Father and to the Son yet that He 
is to be regarded as co-equal with them 
in substance and in authority. That the 
Father sends the Spirit as He sends the 
Son and yet the Spirit's work is peculiarly 
His own. That the Son prays the Father 
for the Spirit's descent and yet that the 
Son's work must be carried on and ap- 
plied by the Spirit. 

Eleventh, that Jesus joins the Three in 
one summary phrase which indicates that 
a relation to each of the three persons of 
the Godhead is implied in the acceptance 
of Jesus and in entrance upon the Chris- 
tian life. That the symbol which stands 
for admission to discipleship had Father, 
Son and Spirit indelibly inscribed upon 



158 The Holy Spirit 

it to call attention to this threefold rela- 
tion. That this is the promise of the 
permanence of the disciples' work and 
the sure pledge of the victory of the 
Kingdom in the hearts of men. 



THE END 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 

A 

Abiding in Christ- — through Holy Spirit, 118. 

Admission to Kingdom, 146. 

Advocate, 29. 

Apostles credible witnesses to Jesus, 93. 

Apostles' Creed, 149. 

Apostles teach mature doctrine of Trinity, 22, 23, 

Apostles' teaching final, 92. 
Artificers, equipped by Spirit, 16. 
Athanasian Creed, 133. 

B 

Baptism — admission to the Kingdom, 146. 

by fire, 52. 

Christian, 51. 

in name of Trinity, 136, 142, 144, 147. 

of Jesus, 39,45,57- 

of John, 52. 
Beistand, 75. 

159 



160 Index of Subjects 

Believer, a source of eternal life, 1 14. 
Blasphemy against Holy Spirit, 26, 53, 57, 
Blindness of Apostles, 98. 



Caesarea Philippi, Scene at, 83. 

Chief Gift of the Father, 62 ff. 

Christian Baptism, 51. 

Claims of Jesus to Messiahship, 35. 

Comforter, 29, 75. 

Communion with Father and Son through Paraclete, 

83,89,118. 

Confession of Holy Spirit in Baptism, 147. 
" Convict," meaning of, 125. 
Cosmos, Spirit and the, 1, 17. 
Creation, Agency of Spirit in, 2, 3. 
Crowning Sin, Rejection of Jesus, 126. 
Crucifixion must precede Spirit's coming, 124. 



D 



David's predictions of Messiah, 27. 

Death of Jesus logically prior to its benefits, 113. 

Demons, Dispossession of by Jesus, 42. 

Departure of Jesus necessary, 122 f. 

Disposition of the Father to answer Prayer, 63, 68. 



Index of Subjects 161 

Distribution of Teaching concerning Holy Spirit, 

24 ff. 
Doctrine of Trinity, Development of, 19 ff. 



Education of the Twelve by the Spirit, 91. 
Entrance to the Kingdom, 46. 
Equality of Holy Spirit with the Father, 135. 
Equality of Holy Spirit with the Son, 141. 
Eternal Life a continuous gift, 109. 



Faith required for entrance to Kingdom, 49. 

Father's chief gift, The, 62 ff. 

Fellowship with God, Spirit the medium of, 83, 89, 

139 ff. 
" Finger of God," Meaning of, 43. 
For-teller, Prophet a, 6, 
Fore-teller, Prophet a, 6. 
Fountain, Perpetual, 108. 

Four Gospels, Sources for Teaching of Jesus, 24. 
Friend in Bed, Parable of, 63. 
Fruit-bearing, through the Spirit, 118. 



Gideon, 4. 
K 



1 62 Index of Subjects 

Gift, Father's Chief, 62 ff. 

" Gift" in New Testament, 107 f. 

" Gift of God " is Holy Spirit, 107. 

God in Old Testament Works by His Spirit, 16. 

Gospels, Sources of Teaching of Jesus, 24. 

Gospel, John's, Teaching concerning Spirit in, 

29, 73 f - 
Gospels, Synoptic, Teaching concerning Spirit in, 
24 ff. 
Johannine Teaching assumed 
in, 32. 
Great Commission, 33, 142 f. 
Greek Church on "Procession of the Spirit," 133. 

H 

Hidden Treasure, Parable of, 66. 

Historical Criticism and Intimations of Trinity in 

Old Testament, 20. 
Holy Spirit, a permanent Gift, no f. 

and dispossession of demons by Jesus, 

42 f. 

and Sanctification, 102 ff. 

and Peace, 118. 

and Prayer, 118. 

and the Baptism of Jesus, 39, 45, 57. 

and the Christian Life, 102 ff. 



Index of Sttbjects 163 

Holy Spirit and the Cosmos, I, 17. 

and the Individual, 14, 117 ff. 

and the Kingdom, 42 ff. 

and the Messiah, 11, 35. 

and the Messianic Age, 8, 21. 

and the New Birth, 49 ff. 

and the Plan of Salvation, 17. 

and the Prophets, 6 ff. 

and the Supernatural Conception of 

Jesus, 40, 45, 57. 
and the Tabernacle, 5. 
and the Theocracy, 3 ff. 
assures Christian Service, 112 f. 
as Teacher, 91. 
Confession of in Baptism, 147. 
Conviction of World by, 120 ff. 
Distribution of Teaching concerning, 

24- 
Equality of, with Father and Son, 141. 
Father's Chief Gift, 62 ff. 
God active in the World, 16. 
in Education of the Twelve, 91. 
in Old Testament, 1 fr. 
in Persecution, 24, 54, 119. 
is " Living water," 107. 
Meaning of, 90. 



164 Index of Subjects 

Holy Spirit, Medium of Fellowship with God, 83, 
89, 139. 
Name of, 16. 
Personality of, 131 ff. 
" Procession "of, 133. 
Regeneration by means of, 46 ff. 
Sanctifying agent in Old Testament, 

i 4 f. 

Sin against, 26, 53 ff. 

Spirit of the Truth, 85, 91, 117. 

Subordination of, 134, 141. 

Teaching concerning, in John's Gos- 
pel, 29, 73 f. 

Teaching concerning, in Synoptic 
Gospels, 24 ff. 

Two eras of manifestation, 17 f., 33. 



Importunity in Prayer, 63. 
Individual, Spirit and the, 14, 117 ff. 
Inspiration of Prophets, 6 ff., 27. 
Intimations of Trinity in Old Testament, 19 ff. 
" In the Name of," 145. 

j 

Jesus Christ, a crucified Saviour, 124. 



Index of Subjects 165 

Jesus Christ, desire of instructed disciples, 149. 

mission to reveal the Father, 140. 

Rejection of, 126. 
John's Gospel, Teaching concerning Spirit in, 29, 

73 ff. 

Joseph, 5. 

Judas, not Iscariot, 140. 
Judgment, Conviction in respect of, 128. 
of Satan, 128. 



K 

Kingdom, Entrance to, 46, 146. 

The, a Spiritual one, 123. 

of God, Spirit and the, 26, 42 ff. 
Kings of Israel equipped by Spirit, 1 6. 



Lawgivers of Old Testament equipped by Spirit, 

16. 
Leaven, Parable of, 148. 
Life-giving Fountain, 112 ff. 
Living Water, 106 ff. 

Localization of Christianity guarded against, 123. 
Lord's Prayer, 63, 65. 



1 66 Index of Subjects 

M 

Mark's Gospel, Order of, 55, 71. 

Matthew's account of Sermon on Mount, 64 f. 

Gospel, Order of, 55, 71. 
Messiah, 8. 

Messiah, Development of Doctrine of, 11 ff. 
Equipment of, 12, 35 ff. 
The Spirit and the, 1 1 ff. 
Messianic Age, The Spirit and the, 8, 31, 34. 
People, The, 13. 
Prophecy, 8 ff., 99. 
Ministry of Jesus preliminary, 77. 
Mission, Jesus' testimony to His own, 37. 
Mustard Seed, Parable of, 148. 



N 



" Name in Scripture," 90. 
" Name in Jesus," 90. 
Nazareth, Jesus at, 25, 36. 
New Birth by Spirit, 49 ff. 

by water, 49. 

revealed by new Life, 103 ff. 
New Era of Spirit, 17 ff., 33. 
Nicodemus, 46 ff., 103. 



Index of Subjects 167 



Old Dispensation witness to New, 52. 
Old Testament, preparation for Redeemer, 15. 
Teaching concerning Spirit 
1 ff. 
Order of Mark's Gospel, 55, 71. 

Matthew's Gospel, 55, 71. 



Parable, of Friend in Bed, 63. 

of Hidden Treasure, 66. 
of Leaven, 148. 
of Mustard Seed, 148. 
of Pearl of Great Price, 66. 
Paraclete, 29. 

chapters, 29, 73, 116, 118. 

Foregleams of later Teaching, 28, 72. 

in Luke's Gospel, 94 ff., 99. 

in Matthew's Gospel, 98 ff. 

in Synoptic Gospels, 70 ff. 

Meaning of, 74 ff. 

Personal Helper of Disciples, 30, 70 ff., 
73> 7 6 > 118,119. 

Promise of, to the Twelve, 79 ff, 85, 92, 

93- 



1 68 Index of Subjects 

Paraclete, Relation to the Godhead, 130 fF. 
Relation to the Father, 133 fF. 
Relation to the Son, 136 fF. 
Substitute for Jesus, 29. 
Superintendent of work of Redemption, 

to convict the world, 30, 119, 120. 
Peace through the Spirit, 118. 
Pearl of great Price, Parable of, 66. 
Pentecost, Prediction of, 100. 
Persecution, Spirit's Help in, 27, 54, 119. 
Personality of Holy Spirit, 131. 
Pharaoh, 5. 

Pharisees and unpardonable Sin, 58. 
Pharisees, Controversy of Jesus with, 25, 42, 53. 
Plan of Salvation, Stages in development of, 78. 
Pool of Siloam, 114. 
Prayer, Jesus' Teaching about, 62 fF. 

Lord's, 63,65. 

through the Spirit, 118. 
" Procession of the Spirit," 133. 
Promise, Meaning of, 96. 
" Promise of my Father," 94 fF. 
Prophecy, Messianic, 8 fF., 99. 
Oral, 7. 
Written, 7. 



Index of Subjects i6g 

Prophets equipped by Spirit, 16. 

Inspiration of, 6 ff., 27. 

of Judah and Israel, 16. 

Representative of God, 140. 
Psychology, Scriptures not to teach, 8. 

R 

Redeemer for Israel, 11, 

Redemption Agent, Holy Spirit, 16, 18. 

Regeneration by Holy Spirit, 46 ff. 

of Israel, 9. 
Rejection of Jesus, crowning Sin, 126. 

Sin against Holy Spirit, 60. 
Religious Life of Old Testament Saints, 14. 
Righteousness, Conviction in respect of, 127 ff. 
God's gift, 128. 



Samaritan woman, 105, 116, 139. 

Samson, 4. 

Sanctification, Work of Spirit in, 102 ff. 

Sanctifying agency of Spirit in Old Testament, 15, 

Satan, author of Jesus' Condemnation, 128. 
Saul, 4. 



1 70 Index of Subjects 

Sermon on Mount in Matthew's Gospel, 64 f. 

Servant of Jehovah, 12 ff., 36. 

Servants of God equipped with Spirit, 28. 

Service, Christian, assured by Spirit, 112 f. 

Sin, Conviction in respect of, 126 f. 

Sonship of Christ in Old Testament, 18 

Spirit of God (see Holy Spirit). 

Spirit of Truth, 85 ff., 91, 117. 

Spiritual Kingdom, 123. 

Stages of Plan of Salvation, 78. 

Subordination of Holy Spirit, 134, 141. 

Suffering Saviour, 12. 

Superintendence of Redemption by Spirit, 17. 

Supernatural Conception, 40,45, 57. 

Sychar, 105. 

Synoptic Gospels, Johannine Teaching assumed in, 

3 2 - 

Teaching concerning Spirit in, 

24 ff. 



Tabernacle, Building of, 5. 
Tabernacles, Feast of, 114, 116. 
Talmud, 114. 
Teacher, Holy Spirit as, 91. 



Index of Subjects 171 

Temptation of Jesus, 39, 51. 

Testimony of Jesus to His own Mission, 37, 

" That Day," meaning of, 89. 

Theocracy, Spirit in, 3 ff. 

Theophanies of Old Testament, 140. 

Three Years of Jesus' Ministry, Importance of, 34. 

Topical character of Luke's Gospel, 54, 71. 

Transition in Gospel Teaching concerning Spirit, 

27. 
Trinitarian baptismal formula, 149. 

language in epistles, 149. 
Trinity in Christian Doctrine, 142. 
Trinity in Old Testament, 18 ff. 
"Truth" in John's Gospel, 86 f. 
Truth, Spirit of, 85 ff., 91, 117. 
Two elements in New Birth, 104. 
Two eras of Spirit's Power, 1 7 ff. 



U 
Unpardonable Sin, 26, 53 ff., 59. 

W 

Well of Jacob, 114. 

Wicked men, God's use of, 4. 



172 Index of Subjects 

World, Conviction of, by Spirit, 1 20 ff. 
" World " in writings of John, 120 ff. 



Year of Jubilee, 37. 



INDEX OF TEXTS 



Genesis i. 2 2 

i. 26 2 

ii. 7 2 

xli. 38 5 

Exodus xxxi. 3 5 

Numbers xi. 17 5 

xi. 25-30 5 

Deuteronomy xxxii. 1 1 
2 

Judges vi. 34 4 

xiii. 25 4 

1 Samuel x. 6 4 

Job xxvi. 13 3 

xxx. 4 3 

Psalms li. II 15 

civ. 30 3 



Psalms ex. 1 


27 


cxliii. 10 


15 


Isaiah xi. 1 


12 


xii. 3 


114 


xxxii. 15-17 


9 


xl. 10 


99 


11 


97 


xlii. 1 


12 


xliv. 2, 3 


9 


3 


97 


xlviii. 10 


l 3 


14-16 


13^4 


16 


20 


lxi. 1 


25, 3 6 



Ezekiel xxxvi. 27 10, 95 
xxxvii. 14 10 

Joel ii. 28-30 10, 95, 

100 

*73 



174 



Index of Texts 



Zechariah iv. 


6 


99 


Luke xi. 


20 


43 


xii. 10 




95 


xii. 10 
12 




54 
27,71 


Matthew iii. 1 1 


50 (bis) 


xxiv. 49 




29.94 


V. 20 




128 








vi - 33 




66 


John i. 


[0 


120 


vii. 7-1 1 




64 


29 




121 


x. 19, 20 




27 


32, 
iii. 3 


33 


50 
46 


20 




70,132 








xii. 22, 23 




53 


5 




47.50 


28 




26,43 


15- 
16 


17 


47 
107 


3^3 2 




x 33 








xvi. 15 ff. 




83 


iv. 1 
24 




105 
140 


xxii. 43,44 




27 




38 










vii - 37 •> 


112 


xxiii. 29—39 




57 


39 

viii. 39 




"3 
108 


xxviii. 19 29 
20 


,1 


33. H2 

98 










47 




87 








xii. 47 




121 


Mark iii. 19b- 


"30 53 


xiv— xvi. 


29, 


73. Il6 > 


xii. 36 




27 






118 


xiii. 11 




27,70 


xiv. 13 




118 








16 


84, 


i37. Hi 


Luke iv. 18 




25, 3 6 


17 




87. J 39 


xi. 13 




63 


18- 


25 


88 


14-26 




53 


22 




141 



Index of Texts 



175 



John xiv. 26 


90, 


*3 2 > 
141 


John xvii 


. 25 


121 


27 




118 


Acts i. 4 




29 


xv. 19 




121 


6 




98 


26 


132 


»!33 


8 




99 


27 




118 


ii. 16 




10 


xvi. 6, 7 




122 


38 




108 


7 




141 


vii. 51 




57 


8 ff. 




132 


viii. 20 




108 


9-1 1 




126 


x.45 




108 


12 




9 1 


xi. 17 




108 


J 3 




139 








13^4 




132 


11 Corinthians v. 


15 112 


14 




138 


ix. 15 




107 


26 




85 








29 




116 


Galatians 


ii. 5 


86 


33 




129 








xvii. 16—23 




121 


1 Peter i. 


10-12 


21 



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